I Want To Believe. Wocka, Wocka, Wocka!

Fox Mulder meets Fozzie Bear. You know? It totally works. I think Janice, the guitarist from Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem would make a good Scully for him. (Fozzie Mulder by Amy Mebberson)

Previously on Popped Culture...

The ALF-Files

Wockawocka Orange

Wokka Wakka Wonka

Can't We Nerds Just Get Along?

Captain RibMan has a dream: "From the sandy hills of Tatooine, let freedom ring; Let freedom ring from the mountains of Mordor; Let freedom ring from the plains of Rigel VII; Let freedom ring from the hallowed halls of Hogwarts. From every tree in Pandora, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every alien village and every shire, from every castle to every city in the clouds, we will be able to speed up that day when all of The Force’s children—black men and white men and half-black-half-white men from Cheron from that one Trek episode, Muggles and wizards, those who want to believe and the skeptics, Jedi and Sith, Time Lords and Daleks, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Ewok spiritual, “Yub nub, yub nub.”

Available on redbubble and for cheap for a couple more hours on TeeFury.

Previously on Popped Culture...

Vitruvian Robot

A Clockwork Smurf

Mystery Machine Transformer

The Fan Fiction Is Out There

Creative romanticism — that works, right? Nothing Happened Today by Ed Harrington.

Previously on Popped Culture...
The ALF-Files
Cereal Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est?
Whose Responsible This? Birth Of A Meme

The ALF-Files

Mulder finally finds the Alien Life Form he has been searching for. Scully is suitable bewildered. I want to believe that if they ever do another X-Files movie, this will be the plot. (via Tim Tomkinson)

Previously on Popped Culture...
GandALF
Duck Hunter S. Thompson
The Marketing Campaign Is Out There

The Marketing Campaign Is Out There

In a summer season crowded with super heroes and big-budget blow 'em ups, how does a long-lost franchise break through the marketing clutter? No, not Indiana Jones — is there anyone who doesn't know that's coming out? (Plus it has a Cannes premiere, for whatever reason.) And I'm not talking about Sex and City, which has every media outlet indulging in all the fashion and relationship brouhaha that swirls around it.

I speak instead of intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who have long since faded from our TV screens. While the show went off the air in 2002, for many fans it ended two years previously when David Duchovney started curtailing his appearances. I had been an avid fan but lost interest with the convoluted, going-nowhere mythology, and once Mulder was gone I transferred my allegiances to a young Sydney Bristow. I never even saw the finale. A movie came out, which I recall had something to do with bees, and is now mostly referenced as a cautionary tale for Lost on how not to wrap up a series.

With so much baggage — and indifference — The X-Files has embarked upon a brilliant stealth marketing campaign to get people talking about extraterrestrials again, with the aid of some very heavy hitters.

First the Vatican weighed in, out of nowhere, professing a belief in aliens. "In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists," said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.

"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.

This from a church who didn't get around to admitting that Galileo was right about the earth revolving around the sun until 1992.

Then on the same day Britain's Ministry of Defense released their files on UFO sightings, dating back to the 1970s, with more to come. The ministry said it compiled the reports solely to determine whether enemy aircraft had infiltrated British airspace. "The Ministry of Defense has no other interest or role regarding UFO matters and does not consider questions regarding the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial life-forms," it said Wednesday.

A coincidence, as easily explained as weather balloons reflecting city lights, or evidence of viral marketing is out there? It's a conspiracy I want to believe.