What If You Found A Portal ...?

"What if you found a portal to a parallel universe? What if you could slide into a thousand different worlds? Where it's the same year, and you're the same person, but everything else is different. And what if you can't find your way home?"

- Quinn Mallory
- SLIDERS

Dude, did I ever used to be into the show Sliders on FOX. It replaced The X-Files after that show moved to a new timeslot back in the mid 1990's, and at first I was almost as enamored with Sliders as I was with The X-Files. Those first two seasons of the show were just plain awesome - a young grad student, his on again off again girlfriend, his genious physics professor, and a down on his luck soul singer who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time get swept into a portal that takes them to an alternate universe. And they can't find their way home. Each episode was a new adventure in a new parallel earth. Man, what a great show. Sure, it eventually went way, way downhill, and then suffered two seasons of mostly mediocre episodes when it was reincarnated on the Sci Fi Channel. But, at first, this show was amazing and ahead of its time.

So ...

It was kind of cool that, while walking out of The Tonight Show today I bumped into none other than Quinn Mallory himself, Jerry O'Connell! He was on the show along with his brother Charlie (who joined the cast of Sliders in its later years) to promote their various upcoming projects. Coolness.

Today was also cool in that many of my fellow NBC Pages and I attended a talk and Q and A session given by the president of entertainment programming of the company. He was a very nice and brutally honest guy who's no B.S. opinions were quite refreshing to hear, and he offered a nice mix of inside industy info and how-did-I-get-to-where-I-am anecdotes. Definitely one of the more noteworthy and valuable experiences I've had since I started at the page program.

Otherwise I've mostly been bogged down in this annoying car stuff. Hopefully I'll have my rearview miiror fixed tommorow morning, but the dent I suffered from my collision probably won't be repaired until sometime next week at the earliest (see yesterday's post for the unfortunate details of my auto accident - and in case you were wondering, don't worry I'm pretty much okay).

RANDOM STUFF:

LOST - I really enjoyed tonight's episode, and found it to be a very powerful mix of emotional highs and lows. Now I've heard / read some negative opinions of the episode, declaring it too obvious and telegraphed to have ( ................................ SPOILER warning .................................) Boone die. But I don't see why they need to kill a character for shock value alone - this is a different type of show than 24 and is much more character driven. Boone's death leaves Locke isolated and targeted as a potential murderer by Jack. It leaves Shannon confused and unpredictable. It leaves Jack absorbed in guilt and anger. It's a death that made sense plot-wise. So who cares if it isn't shocking or whatever? Anyways, it was a great episode in my opinion (except for the flashback ... so what was the point of it exactly, except to show that Jack is / was married?). And the build towards the season finale is really picking up steam. Apparently the two hour finale will end on an incredibly huge, twist-ending cliffhanger. Hopefully it will live up to the hype. But it's gonna be a fun ride getting there. My grade: A -

- So in LA this classic rock station has now become "Jack 93.7." Basically they play completely random songs in no particular order, spanning a wide range of genres, from pop to classic rock to oldies to 80's one-hit-wonders. At first I hated it, but now I am kinda starting to warm up to this format, it is like an mp3 player on radio, in a weird way. Definitely an interesting format, and you never know when a really good song might come on. But you definitely do hear some obscure or underplayed songs that you normally would never hear on a regular radio station.

Well, barring any accidental forays into parallel universes, it's time to wind down and head to sleep. Raise the roof.