Ken Newquist 
A new trailer for Fox’s The New Mutants dropped this week, giving us glimpses of all of its major characters and a little more insight into its horror-movie-in-an-asylum premise. What surprised me most about this trailer wasn’t the horror premise: I knew about that already, and it fits with the Demon Bear saga (one of the early New … Read more
Board games and role-playing games vied for dominance under the Geek Tree this year with the arrival of Roll for the Galaxy, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, and Vault of Dragons as well as the RPG books Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Alien: The Role-playing Game. Roll for the Galaxy (Amazon / Website): The Race for the Galaxy is one of my gaming group’s favorite … Read more
Two years ago, I broke my right ankle slipping on snow-covered ice. I didn’t just break it though; I had a trimalleolar fracture plus dislocation. In laymen’s terms, I broke my ankle real good. I was in a cast for six weeks and a boot for something like two months. Physical therapy dominated most of 2018. It seems … Read more
The last Ornament-a-Day entry is dedicated to the only geeky ornament left on the family tree: 2012’s Darth Vader Peekbuster. Given that the family tree is where the wrapped family presents go and since this Vader is designed to detect and scold would-be present peekers, it’s entirely appropriate. This battery-powered, Christmas-themed Vader wears his traditional black armor … Read more
For years, the ornament I wanted most for the Geek Tree was the U.S.S. Reliant (NCC-1864), the U.S.S. Enterprise’s opponent in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. While I had plenty of variant Enterprises from all of Star Trek’s eras and any number of opposing ships like the Klingon Bird of Prey and Romulan Warbird, Hallmark steadfastly avoided releasing Khan’s improvised flagship. That changed in 2010 when the … Read more
Hallmark released two new Star Wars Storyteller ornaments in 2019: The Imperial Star Destroyer and the Y-Wing. Like the other Storyteller ornaments, they feature LED illuminated regions (the cargo bay on the Star Destroyer, the cockpit on the Y-Wing) that slowly rotate through different colors. Powered and connected by Hallmark’s proprietary Keepsake power cord, the two new ships join … Read more
Star Trek Beyond is one of my favorite Trek movies. Unlike the derivative and uninspired Star Trek Into Darkness that preceded it, Beyond is an original story focused on exploration as well as the optimistic future that Trek embraces. Unfortunately, it didn’t do great in the box office, leading to a lull in new cinematic Star Trek offerings but that didn’t stop Hallmark from releasing the … Read more
“Go To Sleep Baby Yoda” Perfectly Captures the Torture of Putting a Toddler to Bed: Yeah … it’s pretty much exactly like that. The Unseen Enterprise-D: Forgotten Trek documents the portions of the Next Generation’s Enterprise that we never saw on the show. It’s filled with fan and concept art for areas like the main shuttle bay, the ship’s many … Read more
Geeky tree toppers are hard to find. Sure, there are tons of angels, stars, and other toppers out there, but there are very few that fit in with the Geek Tree. For a long time, it was only Santa Yoda that fit that role. And then I found the Weeping Angel. Inspired by the now-classic … Read more
I went Old School with the first two books on my list on my summer reading list: Robert Heinlein’s The Past Through Tomorrow is a collection of his “Future History” short stories, novellas, and novels written in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a time when the future was atomic, women working in space was a radical idea, … Read more