I do not like sports. I really do not like them. I am that person who honestly does not understand why anyone would run unless they were being chased. (This does not mean that many people who enjoy sports have not tried to explain. Oh, how the many have tried.)

However, the Spanish Association of Olympic Sports recently released a steampunk calendar awesome enough to make even the biggest couch potato sit up and take notice. (And then lie back down and rest – sitting up really knocks the wind out of you!)

This is a total picspam without any commentary besides “LOOK HOW NICE,” but in all honesty, every time I look at this set of photos I grin. The detail, the translation to the steampunk setting, the composition – it’s all spectacular. I really enjoy the gritty, slapdash feel to the whole affair.

(I also enjoy the synchronized swimming one, which is both very well done and also hilarious.)

The rest are under here, since they are legion.
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I’m guessing the question mark stands for “one bajillion.”

So, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the ever-inscrutable firmament (which is even less scrutable if you’re only using your own eyeballs), I decided it was time to legitimize this whole business with a pair of binoculars while I decided how I wanted to proceed telescope-wise. (Hint: I want one, but I don’t know enough yet to pick a good one. This will change, I hope; when the nerd is ready, the telescope appears.)

This meant a trip to a tech superstore in Manhattan where a very knowledgeable and awesome dude helped me pick out a very solid pair of beginner specs. While I was at the counter, a gentleman approached and asked to examine a pair of small binoculars. He did so, then handed them back, glanced around, and asked in a slightly lower voice:

“Do you have anything less, uh, conspicuous?”

New York: where people do not even bother to pretend they are not going to use those binoculars to spy on people.

I, however, had nobler intentions, and planned only to perv at the sky.

AND I DID.

I was, as usual, underprepared by the time I got there (someone on the subway is enjoying my little star chart right now), but I still managed to see this:

Picture by charizardi on Flickr; my shakes are bad enough without trying to get a photo in on top of everything else.

People who are actual, serious astronomy buffs whose telescopes can track the Great Red Spot are laughing at me right now, and rightly so! But for me, for now, this was beautiful.

(Also, for the love of Pete, if you’re going to go in and ask someone for pervnoculars, TRY to be subtle about it, could you please?)

Against all good advice, someone is remaking The Three Musketeers. Again.

Since it’s being helmed by Paul W. S. “Can we have this make less sense?” Anderson, I feel safe predicting that this version is probably going to join the ranks of the eight million other sub-par versions of the story. (For a pretty foolproof adventure story, The Three Musketeers loves proving that aphorism about sufficiently talented fools.)

However, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the costumes in this on-set report.

So, some lovely costumes, and one guy who’s about to have an awkward moment.

First, a one-picture primer of the Georgian period circa 1636:

And a romanticized 19th-century depiction of what seems to be slightly ealier, say, 1625, before Louis XIII’s sumptuary laws of 1629 and 1633 tried to clamp down on lace and gold thread and the size of men’s cuffs, effects which tended to last about six weeks before everybody glitzed the crap out of their clothes again.

Anyway, 1625, everybody!

So, with that in mind, we get a look at Orlando Bloom’s Duke of Buckingham and Milla Jovovich’s Milady de Winter. (Click any of them for the full, fuzzy glory.)

Aside from the Dude Boots to prevent any wearing of pumps by the menfolk, this outfit is pretty boss. The stiff my-dog-just-got-stitches collar feels outdated to me, but they might still have been in use (I am not at all well-versed in men’s historical fashion). The trunks are the right shape, the doublet is the right shape, the brocades are appropriately over-the-top. If he could get some lace cuffs going, we’d have a real contender.

Milady de Winter also makes a pretty good showing.

Dresses of this era tended to have cylindrical skirts rather than trailing trains, but the superlow neckline and puff sleeves dripping in lace are spot-on, and that material is a STUNNA. (Note: stunna quite possibly inaccurate for the time period, is too stunning to care.)

You can also see from this shot that they’re not cheating with hoopskirts.

That looks to me like a quilted petticoat and a gold-brocade petticoat, minimum, under the purple brocade skirt. Thumbs up everyone, especially Milla, who is dragging several pounds of dress with her.

So far, pretty good! Then we hit this shot of an unobjectionable Cardinal and his entourage.

Um, young sir in the middle?

Does Charles IX of France (1550-1574) know that you cribbed his style?

I seriously don’t understand what’s going on here. It’s vaguely possible that someone saw some trunks tucked into high boots and thought they were in the clear, but we are looking at some straight-up Elizabethan breeches, so I don’t know what the hell happened. I mean, Hollywood routinely pulls things back and forth by a decade or so for the look they want, I get it, but we’re talking fifty years here. It’s like watching Becoming Jane and realizing she’s in 1817 and everyone else is still in 1790. It was a big silhouette shift! People are going to notice!

I will be keeping an eye on this, because unless time travel is involved, I need to find out what that dude is doing there! Especially since, even if they’re going with an interpretation of something like this soldier look, it was fifteen years out of fashion already…in Germany. What is this, The Other Boleyn Girl?

Also, that was really long for a fly-by. Sorry; once I start looking for costumes it’s hard to stop. I’m actually going to look for more set reports from this, though, because by and large this is looking better than many other period pieces, costume-wise. (My hopes for an overall terrible movie are still high.)

Images via The History of Costume and The Costumer’s Manifesto

So, I watched the pilot of Nikita last week. I liked it enough to tune in this week. I like this week enough to watch next week. It’s not a Season Pass, but it might be! It’s one more good episode away from hooking me for a whole season.

It’s partly because of these things (and in spite of a couple of these things).

1. The pilot did not pretend for one second that you haven’t seen every other iteration of Nikita by now. The twist here is that Nikita successfully went rogue a few years before the start of the series, and now that her boyfriend has been killed (by Division, one assumes), she’s starting a quest to bring down the whole place. It’s a nice reversal of the manpain trope, and moves us into a unique dynamic for the Nikita franchise. The show also has a new recruit, but they use only what they have to – she wakes up in the white room, Michael walks in and introduces himself, and we cut. We know how it goes, and the show knows we know.

2. That said, I generally could not care less about the basement-full-of-new-recruits storyline. It’s just all so…CW. (I know, I know.)

3. Maggie Q. as Nikita. She’s very good – wry, subtle, but with some quiet moments that show how much she’s actually suffered under Division.

4. Nikita has a female friend whose friendship is not entirely about getting coffee and gossiping supportively. Please note, I am not against either of those things, which are awesome things, but as she is on the run from the law she probably doesn’t have a lot of time to grab coffee. Or maybe she does! I mean, she can shoot someone in the eyeball from a hundred yards. MAYBE SHE GETS COFFEE WHENEVER THE HELL SHE WANTS. (This tangent is getting out of hand, sorry.) ANYWAY, the friendship, which I am leaving vague on purpose, has a lot of promise, and I like the way the friend plays into the larger role of the series instead of just being a glorified bit player.

4. A lot has happened in two episodes. And by that I mean a LOT has happened. Some shows benefit from a slow build, but the Nikita people know that they would probably benefit from setting a lot of balls in motion right away to hook people. (P.S. That’s working.) For instance, with the Michael/Nikita storyline, they’ve already met again, he’s admitted his feelings and aided an escape, she’s shot him, she’s shot someone to save him, he’s told it was an attempt on his life, they have a phone call in which he acknowledges she saved his life (sparing us three episodes of misunderstandings), and they have a standoff that ends with Nikita having the upper hand. For Episode 2, that’s not bad, especially since their storyline takes a backseat to the major storylines.

5. Really, Shane West was the best this show could do?

6. The show knows it’s ridiculous. Nikita, who’s in hiding, lives in what looks like an abandoned wing of the Louvre and has a huge computer desk (from which she runs many secret programs) that faces away from every single one of the enormous windows. If she is not the victim of a sniper attempt by episode 7, I will want to know why.

(Also, she uses a Dell? Really? I mean, I use Dells, but I use them for writing and looking at pictures on the internet, and not to bring down covert government agencies.)

7. The recruits’ computer-hacking program looked EXACTLY like the Gibson in Hackers. I want to think this is intentional, because that makes it awesomely hilarious instead of accidentally hilarious.

8. Same for Birkoff. I can see how he can be a funny, useful character…just as soon as the show stops trying to prove that he is.

9. Melinda Clarke still knows how to steal a scene out from under pretty much anyone. Vamp on.

10. Last night Nikita had a phone call in French from a potential source of information. “This is like amateur hour!” sounds even better in French. It’s a small thing that’s part of a general trend of things happening because Nikita is a badass planner. I approve.

Has anyone else been watching this? What’s the feeling so far? I know a friend who refuses to watch it because her heart belongs to the Peta Wilson iteration, but after these two episodes I’m willing to be convinced this could be a vaguely-fun hour every week. You?

My author interview for The Living Dead 2 is up at the anthology website! Hint: I am a nerd who has complicated feelings about Coney Island.

I should probably amend this answer, though:

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

I think it’s common knowledge that the human body is pretty disgusting, so the research went quickly.

While I think no one will argue that the human body is full of various squishy internal parts knocking together like sacks of pudding in a bone-jar, that is not the entirety of the research I did. I also went to Coney Island many times to research this story. And to ride the Ferris Wheel against my better judgment. And also maybe to eat funnel cake on an empty beach. (You can’t prove it!)

If you want to know what kind of story comes out of eating funnel cake at Coney Island, you can check out “And the Next, and the Next” for free here.