Giant Freakin Robot

While AMC’s The Walking Dead has definitely put its own spin on the oft-trodden zombie genre, it still falls in line with all that came before in one specific way: it’s told from the point of view of the living. Sure, it’s easy to stereotype zombies as lazy, shiftless, cannibalistic…but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more too them. Maybe if we took the chance to get to know them, instead of just shooting them or stabbing them in the eye with gardening utensils, who knows what we might find? Maybe they have hopes and dreams beyond just the continual eating of brains. They could have an artistic, creative side. Maybe they just want…to sing.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Walking Dead: The Musical.

Microsoft has a long history of going all-out when it comes to marketing its Halo game franchise, serving up one amazing trailer after another over the years. And since they almost always incorporate live action footage with incredibly realized props and effects, each new trailer is another jab to the heart of every fanboy who still dreams of a Halo movie. Well, better grab some more band-aids for the old ticker, because the Halo 4 launch trailer is here, and it’s produced by David Fincher, and it’s just as awesome as you’d expect.

Titled “Scanned,” the trailer serves up some hints at the mysterious new enemy Master Chief will be facing in the new game, as well as giving us some looks at just what goes into making a Spartan. (It doesn’t look comfortable.) While Fincher lent his producerial talents, visual effects artist Tim Miller (who collaborated with Fincher on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) manned the director’s chair. Check it out.

Humans have come so far in their quest to find true love. You used to have to actually leave your house and put physical and financial effort into finding a significant other. (I’m speaking as a male, but not wanting to leave out the liberated females here.) Then there were party lines, which gave unattractive and antisocial people a chance at perhaps turning a conversation into something more. Speed dating…well, that’s just a stupid idea anyway. Here in the Internet age, you don’t have to get out of your hyperbaric chamber to find literally millions of people to talk to, flirt with, and barrage with candid photographs of food arranged around your genitalia.

Formerly generic in nature, these dating websites have become super-specific in drawing their clientele, focusing on characteristics such as race, religion, and politics. Well, here comes a site that will definitely go on longer and farther than any of those petty experiments. I’m…talking…about…Trekkies. (It’s hard to pull a Shatner impression off in print.)

Trekkie Dating wants fans to mingle electronically in order to “Live Love and Prosper.” Take a few minutes to create a free profile (suggested user name: USSEnterMe), using a false picture of course, and check out some of what this particular dating pool has to offer. If you find something to your taste, you have to get a premium membership for a fee in order to actually contact anyone. Dammit, it’s a dating site, not a money-tree grower. And that part right there makes it sound like almost every other dating site, just with more Vulcan ears.

I was too young to remember many details about seeing Return of the Jedi for the first time, but I distinctly remember being mentally terrified of the Emperor. Not the full-fledged physical fear I had for Freddy Kreuger or Norman Bates, because sci-fi wasn’t at all real to me. But it was in thinking that the biggest, baddest, heaviest-breathing motherfucker in the universe, Darth Vader, actually had someone above him calling the shots. Add to that a face whose wrinkles added up like jelly beans in a jar, and the character was forever memorable to me. Twenty-seven years later, Lucas doesn’t even have to do anything to sort of ruin it for me.

Ian McDiarmid appeared at the New York Comic Con this year and gave fans their nerdbucks’ worth in a panel full of whimsical tales. The one in particular that floated to the top of the pile was his story about how he actually got the job playing the Emperor. It’s all in the nose, see.