If you’re not familiar with her novels, you should be. Connie Willis is probably the best living science fiction author, winner of all the science fiction writing awards, penning classics like To Say Nothing of the Dog, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Remake, Doomsday Book, and many others. But you might not know she’s also a fan of the Christmas story, and has written two collections of stories, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories and A Lot Like Christmas. This year she was tapped to select the contents for American Christmas Stories, an all-new collection of 132 years in 59 stories from well-known and lesser-known writers and authors, from Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and Langston Hughes, to Ed McBain, Shirley Jackson, and Ray Bradbury. Readers will find writers across the ages combining multiple genres with the Christmas tale like science fiction and horror. All reflect the American experience from 1872 to 2004. It’s an incredible look at culture in America, both good and bad, and it’s available now here at Amazon.
As we inch closer to Christmas, Hasbro Gaming is making its latest effort to breathe new life into its classic board games. The new idea is mash-ups of classics, combining two games into one, which should tap into the nostalgia of long-time players. The game company is taking its recently developed game Speak Out and its famous acquired Parker Brothers inventory Monopoly, Clue, Taboo, and Scrabble, and combining them with its celebrated former Milton Bradley games Candy Land, Connect Four, Guess Who?, Jenga, and Twister. The result: Hasbro Mash-Ups, some strange combinations, but new twists for family game night, all at less than $21 each retail price.
The best bet looks to be Monopoly Jenga. This game adds some additional strategy to the wooden block game where players remove a piece of the tower one by one until the tower collapses. The Monopoly twist is adding color-coded Monopoly properties as blocks: Railroads, Free Parking, Chance and Community Chest cards, and a Go to Jail block. The goal? Collect the most properties, property sets, and railroad blocks without making the tower fall.
The strangest is Hasbro’s Taboo Speak Out. There’s something really creepy about a family game with mouthpieces, and the box cover art doesn’t help much.
Perfect for ventriloquists, but a problem for everyone else, the speaking barriers are the key twist to the fun classic Taboo game. The rules are simple: Give clues to get teammates to say the Taboo word on the card, without using any of the five forbidden words, all while wearing a Speak Out game mouthpiece. Easy peasy, right? Maybe not.
Yeah, Black Friday and Star Trek set decoration don’t really seem to go together, do they? I’ll explain.
If you happened to be out and about on the retailers’ big day this week, and you happened to walk by the Target Portrait Studios inside your local Target Store, you might have seen this:
So what’s the big deal? If you’re a Star Trek fan you might notice that Target is using some Italian-made “Calligaris Jam” counter stools for their photo salon guests. Still no idea what I’m talking about? These are the same style of chair that Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk is sitting in when he first meets Zoe Saldana’s Uhura, also sitting in this style of chair, in a Riverside, Iowa, bar, in the 2009 Star Trek movie. This was the first ever meeting of these two characters in the Star Trek universe. The stools are visible at either side of the frame in this scene from the movie:
This isn’t an every-day chair, and set designer Karen Manthey selected these fairly high end stools along with chairs for the Riverside, Iowa, location filmed in L.A. from the Italian design company’s selection of futuristic colors. Below is a screen-used version from the set of the film, in the transparent orange variety, which CBS Paramount sold at auction a few years ago with a handful of other props from this scene. Target has the transparent red-colored version of the chair. At $300-400 per chair, Target Stores must be doing fine in this troubled economy!
If you’re wanting to bring some of the Star Trek futuristic look to your own home, you can buy these online in the bar stool version or a chair version, which also was used in the Riverside bar scene in the film–for the Star Trek fan who has everything, as they say.
Or if you decide to use the Target Portrait Studio this season and you want to get a little sci-fi slant to your photo, ask to use this chair, and send the photo along and we might post it here. Very unusual to see these obscure chairs as we roamed on Black Friday.
While we’re discussing the Riverside bar scene, below are photos of detail of a screen-used cadet sweater worn by background female cadets in the 2009 Star Trek film. This is the same uniquely knitted costume sweater as worn by Zoe Saldana playing Uhura as she sat on the bar stools in the above scene in the film.
Although Anovos is scheduled to produce a Starfleet female cadet uniform for cosplayers, they haven’t yet announced whether they will produce a sweater for the set as used in the film. Here is their prototype replica from their booth at Comic-Con this year:
Check out the Anovos website for other custom gift ideas for your favorite Trekker or Trekkie.
