Qapla'!

Left: A meal fit for a Klingon. "Flame-grilled butcher's skewer", a signature dish at the Meat & Wine Co., Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour in Sydney. It literally drips its meaty juices over the French fries underneath.

Right: The Salmon of Doubt? My "Salmon skewer", also from the Meat & Wine Co. I trusted the chef's recommendation of medium rare, but it was a little too underdone higher up on the skewer. An impressive dish, nonetheless. A fishy alternative to the red meat version.

Flashback to 1987: Cooking with Strop

A satirical presentation about "V: The Series" at Eccentricon, a science fiction media convention (1987) at Richmond, NSW, Australia, took its lead from the classic "Twilight Zone" episode, "To Serve Man". Yours truly, Ian McLean, plays Strop, a Visitor from the Sydney mothership (ie. from television's then-current "V: The Series"). The hapless audience member was supposedly selected "at random". Hehehehe.


Strop says, "Here's one I prepared earlier..."



"Room for one more..."



THE END!

Happy First Contact Day

I didn't realise until tonight, but yesterday - the date of the Sydney Star Trek Meetup's overnight Star Trek Easter Marathon marks only 56 more years to go until First Contact Day. According to the movie, "Star Trek: First Contact", it will be 56 years filled with war, greed, and (per The Next Generation's premiere episode, "Encounter at Farpoint") the Post-Atomic Horror (famine, disease, pestilence, death, etc), but we hear it's worth the wait!

First stop was Galaxy Bookshop, followed by coffee in the Queen Victoria Building, and then dinner at the Meat & Wine Co. - I finally got to sample their famous "Chef's Skewer", which is truly a meat dish fit for any Klingon: large chunks of recently-stabbed meat, onion and capsicum, threaded onto a thick, hot, metal skewer and suspended from a skyhook, dripping rich barbeque sauce onto a tray of fries. Qapla!

Continuing from where we left off from the last viewing marathon, we watched the rest of Season One of TOS episodes, between drifting off for micro sleeps. Junk food, Easter eggs, alcohol, Coke Zero, "Star Trek Monopoly", hot cross buns, sourdough bread and brie, and the "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" episode of "Futurama", kept the ball rolling...

24 hours later and five members were still watching episodes and playing TNG Monopoly! Such stamina. (I came home to feed the dog.) A big thank you to Nate for letting us use his flat for the marathon. Great fun!

Captain's Log: Supplemental. Update via SMS: the intrepid five apparently went to bed at 4am on the morning of their second night of viewing, so they could catch some sleep b4 breakfast.