And who, you might ask, is Alonzo Solace? Well, if you were a 13 year old in 1994 with a closeted love of all things Science Fiction, you would know. You would know that the best show ever aired that year (and that year only, to my dismay) and Alonzo Solace was the character played by the dreamy Antonio Sabato Junior. ‘Earth 2’ was set in the future and was based on the premise that colonists who left Earth looking for a more habitable planet crashed on an alien landscape with little in the way of supplies and no idea where they were. Mix in some hostile aliens, human backstabbing, an adorable kid with a fatal disease, and the Noxema girl. Awesomeness ensued.
Back in 1994, my entire weekend was based around the Sunday night, back-to-back airing of ‘Earth 2’ and ‘Seaquest DSV’, featuring the Teen Bop sensation Jonathan Brandis and a talking dolphin. All this was of course kept top secret from my middle school peers. Science Fiction is not known to be ‘cool’ and my pack of Lip Smacker loving comrades were not about to discuss my feelings on the possibility of creating a viable underwater society or the likelihood of oxygen-consuming life on other planets when ‘My So-Called Life’ was filling the airwaves. So I hunkered down and kept quiet. Until now.
I love Sci-Fi. And Fantasy. And all things alien, futuristic and whimsical. There, I said it. And we’re not just talking about the pop stuff like ‘Men In Black’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’ or even ‘The Flight of the Navigator.’ I’m talking ‘Stargate: Atlantis’ (because who are we kidding, ‘SG-1’ just can’t hold a candle to the spin-off), reruns of ‘Quantam Leap’, ‘Donnie Darko’ and especially any original programming on the Sci-Fi network. If it has a time machine, a unicorn, an elf, or an alien emerging from some human orifice, I’m in. What’s my fascination with this genre? It’s hard to pinpoint, but I’m pretty sure it boils down to this: Happy Endings. Not like the Asian massage parlor kind, but the good guys win, bad guys die, wrongs are righted kind. My over active imagination always needs a playground where it can blow off some steam, and fairy filled forests or extra-terrestrial colonies are always ripe for exploring.
I’m here, I’m odd, and I’m can’t keep quiet anymore.
*photo courtesy of: The Kozy Shack
I own the Stargate DVD and actually hide it behind other movies on my movie shelf.