Site of the Week -- Oct. 25, 1999
t's a little bit spooky in the dusky corner of the Web that houses
Hauntedhouse.com. The site is a communing place for devotees of simple, dark
pleasures. Need a little unholy help crafting All Hallows Eve mayhem?
Visit the forum for hints on how to suck the sweetest scares out of
victims in homemade haunted houses. And in case visitors don't have
enough time to build a spooky home themselves, there is a searchable database of
haunted-house events to attend.
The site also includes a collection of online costume haberdasheries and a masquerade
contest. Need more spine-chilling mood mixin's? The best, most terrorful
horror titles, from Stephen King to R.L. Stine, are reviewed and
recommended. But the best, the blackest, the bone-tingliest, the marrow-freezingest
feature is the scary story section. Visitors can post their purple
prose or even genuine tales of the bleakest terrors ever encountered.
Extra-woeful bonus? Visitors can rate the stories on how truly frightful
they are.
-- Tamara I. Hladik
Site of the Week -- Oct. 18, 1999
e's a war hero. He's a commanding presence. He's an amphibian. And he
wants your vote!
That's right, Admiral Ackbar, leader of the Rebel Alliance's victorious attack on the second
Death Star, is running for president of Earth. All of the details are available on
the Admiral Ackbar For President campaign site, which includes news
releases, campaign posters, an Ackbar look-alike page, a short manifesto,
and sounds recorded during the heat of the Death Star battle. But it also goes beyond sound
bites, extolling the virtues of Ackbar's tactical skills while readily
admitting his cowardly impulses, such as his exclamation: "It's a trap! All
craft prepare to retreat!" during the Death Star assault.
The site turns this negative into a positive, however, by showing how Ackbar's
clown-like floundering during the Star Wars assault actually inspired
his men. It's this comedic genius, coupled with his "fish for everyone"
platform, that will undoubtedly win him the Earth presidency.
-- Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week -- Oct. 11, 1999
or exact and exhaustive data on which episodes of science fiction and fantasy television shows are airing when, The SFTV Page is unparalleled. The flat text files may look as dull as dishwater, but the information sparkles. Start with the Current and Upcoming SFTV Shows & News page, which has news blurbs about the shows, schedule changes, cast changes, special events and more. This page also lists--for more than three dozen broadcast, syndicated and cable series--exactly which episodes will be airing when over the next couple of months. It tells when shows are repeats, or even preempted entirely, so there won't be any nasty surprises.
The SFTV Shows Current Season page lists all the episodes for this plethora of programs in the coming season, and notes special events like the appearance of the Troi and Barclay characters on Star Trek: Voyager this December. The Tube Talk pages contain news archives and articles on such topics as the canceling of Crusade and the new fall TV lineup. Finally there are broadcast history archives, in case anyone needs to know when a particular episode of Xena: Warrior Princess aired in 1996.
-- J.B. Peck
