ITEM #1: ZOMBIEMANIA INVADES GEM! I’m proud to announce that Geppi’s Entertainment Museum is hosting the official US launch of my book, Zombiemania: 80 Movies to Die For, co-authored with GEM Registrar, and fellow zombie movie fan, Andrew Hershberger (www.zombiemania.com). On Thursday, October 4, 2007 from 6pm-9pm, GEM is offering free admission to the museum and some Halloween-themed munchies. Both authors will be in attendance to sign books and chat about the undead, and it’s also a great opportunity to get the jump on the fall schedule and start celebrating Halloween early. So if you’re in the Baltimore area and want to get into a spooky mood, stop by GEM and help us celebrate!

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ITEM #2: This past Monday, September 24, 2007, was the 20th anniversary of the premiere of “Encounter at Farpoint” (although it aired on varying dates due to local syndication). That, for those unschooled in all things Trek, was the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the sequel syndicated series that would become a seven-year pop culture success story and the progenitor of a 24th-century-set empire of Star Trek television shows.

For me, the experience of Star Trek was often affected by the arrival of the Jewish High Holidays, particularly Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, the 24-hour fast, the one where you’re not supposed to do work or watch TV and so on and so forth). Since Jewish holidays follow the lunar calendar, the High Holidays fluctuate over time, falling on dates from early September to mid-October or so. Those dates often coincide with the traditional start of a television season. Can you see where I’m going with this?

I can recall being amazed by the third-season finale, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1,” still one of the finest hours of any Trek series ever and frequently cited by the likes of TV Guide as one of the best episodes of any television series. The cliffhanger, with a Borgified Picard/Locutus threatening Earth and Riker stoically ordering the Enterprise to fire on his former captain, was certainly the stuff of summer frustration. How would the crisis be resolved? Was Picard lost forever? (There were in fact rumors to that effect, propagated through fan networks, media coverage and the early archaic ‘Net before the days of instantaneous and prolific spoiler blogging and message board posting).

And then the unthinkable. TNG’s 1990 fourth season premiere, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2,” the one we’d all been waiting for all summer long…aired on Yom Kippur in my local area. I had to wait an extra day to find out what happened. Agony! A-gon-y! Well, not a whole day to be honest – I timed the VCR before the holiday and watched the show the second the fast was over. TV time-shifting – one of the great gifts of modern technology.

Now here we are so many years later, and I’ve recently rediscovered an appreciation for TNG as well as the next Trek series, Deep Space Nine (which I still think is the narrative high point of modern Trek). Clearly those who have shepherded the franchise for these twenty years also felt the most affection for that first foray into post-classic series storytelling, since they turned the final episode of their latest show, Enterprise, into a TNG tribute guest-starring Jonathan “Riker” Frakes and Marina “Troi” Sirtis. But the less said about Enterprise, the better.

Anyway, let’s all raise a glass of synthehol and toast twenty years of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Make it so! All good things may come to an end, but thanks to reruns, DVDs and whatever other home video formats lurk around the corner, we’ll be able to enjoy the adventures of the Enterprise 1701-D for another twenty years and many more besides. Engage!

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Don’t forget to

Visit Geppi’s Entertainment Museum online at www.geppismuseum.com

or in person at:

301 W. Camden St.
Baltimore, MD21201
(410) 625-7060