LOTR: The Two Towers is not as good as The Fellowship of the Ring, but it's still pretty damn good. I don't like movies that tack on cheesey monologues and too much music, but Gollum was brilliant, and who doesn't love a wisecracking dwarf?

Star Trek: Nemesis is not as good as The Wrath of Khan, and I want people to stop comparing the two. Khan was the only movie where Starfleet was portrayed as a real military institution instead of a loosely Navy-like exploration consortium, and everything in it was still new. Picard uses the same LCD on his desk that I have, and the tricorders are just PDA's with extra plastic now. The Whiz Bang has gone, and so, sadly, has the inspiration for the series. Nemesis is 100% predictable, right on through the tragic ending, and so we have no reason to connect with the characters at any level.

The End Of The Year Coctail Mixer (at someone else's house) was endlessly entertaining. I could not imbibe anything myself, but a few guys there more than made up for my apostasy. There's nothing like listening to a story about Norse mythology being related by a happy man on the floor who holds a beer bottle filled with gin and tonic and insists on spelling out the name of Thor's Hammer. (It's Mjolnir, BTW, not Mjilneer)

"Ssshhhh! I'm guarding the house!" - Gir