Fun Facts About Colorado Springs, Host City to the SGC

First, we must point out that while physically I am about 150 miles away from Colorado Springs (three and a half hours to the COS airport from my doorstep -- but I drive the speed limit), philosophically the distance is much, much greater.  Hal Walter, a writer whose work can be found monthly in the fab magazine Colorado Central, calls the Springs "one of the most physically and spiritually jacked-up cities on Earth . . . a city that is also the vortex for the religious right."  Certainly it's headquarters for Focus on the Family, bastion of conservatism/fundamentalism that says it's all right for members to cheat on their wives and get arrested for drunk driving, but not any of the rest of us.

And if denizens are not religious right, chances are good they're military.  The Springs is home to the U.S. Air Force Academy, Peterson Air Force Base, NORAD, and Fort Carson, as well as possibly something to do with the Colorado National Guard.  My sister met her now ex-husband when he was stationed at Fort Carson, but I've never been to any of these military places.  I just have seen off-duty personnel at the Citadel, the mall in Colorado Springs.

Landmarks include Pikes Peak, which I've never been on top of, and Garden of the Gods, which I've never seen, and not too far away -- for no reason that has ever been given to me -- is Santa's Workshop at the North Pole, which I think I went to when I was about 4.

My sister is a graduate of The Colorado College of Colorado Springs, and she likes to point out that it's the only institution of higher education in the state to officially include "the" as part of its name.  I went once to watch her play basketball, and my mother made me go to her graduation, and I think I was in her dorm room once, so I'm pretty familiar with the campus.  Other institutions include Pikes Peak Community College, the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs (which is too much of a mouthful, so people say UC-Springs), the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and, most important, the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, which was just down the road from my grandmother's when she lived there for a couple years late in her life.  I've never been, but I always meant to go.

For the record, the balcony Daniel Jackson nearly jumped off in "The Light" was nowhere near Colorado Springs, which only has I-25 as any sort of freeway.  As a more-or-less interesting sidelight, I have just been told that buildings along Pikes Peak Avenue are height restricted in order not to obstruct the view of the eponymous mountain. And that Colorado Springs has no recycling program, not even for newsprint.

If you want to know more about Colorado Springs' origins, I'd recommend Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, which really isn't historically accurate at all, but it's probably much easier than actually reading a history book.  Okay, according to the timeline in my fourth-grade history book, The Colorado Story (this is a book I read in the fourth grade, not one I wrote for fourth graders--let us be clear here), the Springs was founded in 1871 by Gen. William J. Palmer, a railroad magnate who for some reason shows up astride a horse in his statue appearance somewhere in some intersection in the city.  “Colorado Springs was intended to be, and became, an attractive residence city and a fashionable summer resort," my book says.  So there you have it.  I'd say it's not really a place to visit unless your sister's attending college there or your grandma's in a retirement home at what was once the north end of town.  But it's not a bad place to fly out of, assuming it's not blizzarding.

Dr. Svetlana Markov [shouldn't that be Markova?]: Is he always like this?
Major Carter:  Actually, this is quite charming.
                --from  "Watergate"

As a member in reasonably good standing of the Colorado Association of Red-Bearded Pundits (CARP), an organization founded and chaired by Denver Post columnists Ed Quillen and Bob Ewegen, I consider myself to be an aspiring curmudgeon.  Someday I hope to achieve the standard set by Ed, who insists that he is still a neophyte of curmudgeondom.  But Jack O'Neill . . . woo, now there's a master.  And a smartass to boot.  What is there not to admire?

Not that I mean to imply that Jack O'Neill is in any way shape or form a dinosaur, but don't you think this is a very cool picture of my dinosaur.

Jack O'Neill is a cantankerous, crotchety, irascible, acerbic, churlish, sarcastic, snide and cynical grumblebunny -- and he's never met a situation he can't find an insult for.  That is so cool!  I want to be just like him when I grow up. Of course, he hasn't gotten around to growing up yet either, so maybe it's just a matter of me putting on a few more years.

My mother used to say this like it was a bad thing:  "You're such a curmudgeon."  You have to wonder how she would lecture Jack if he set foot in her house.

How do you suppose Jack made colonel in this man's military?  I think he would have been bounced about his second wisecrack into it, which I'm guessing would have been somewhere before noon on the first day of OCS.  I did like the moment early in "Tangent" when General Vidrine said, "In all seriousness -- if that's all right with you, Colonel."  Perhaps there is some room for a small sense of humor in the military after all.

Jack's only drawback: he has no friends.  He has colleagues whom he considers to be friends, but when he wants to go fishing, they're the only ones he knows to ask.  [For the record, I'm with Teal'c on the whole fishing thing.]  In "New Ground" he tells his captor, "I have no friends, in the woods or otherwise."  Sadly, this seems to be a mostly true statement. What's the point of being a friendless curmudgeon?  You have to have at least one friend to carp to -- even better if that friend likes to carp right back, and the two of you go around sounding like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in Grumpy Old Men.

But the important thing here is that we all understand:  Jack O'Neill has set a standard some of us can only dream about.  And don't you get chills thinking about what he'd be like at age 70?

Why We Should Idolize Samantha Carter   

My shrine, still (sadly) dedicated to Kate Mulgrew, because Stargate has slacked badly on the whole merchandising issue.

Amanda Tapping, the New One True Space Babe!

In another life, I used to be Cabana Boy to Kate Mulgrew, the One True Space Babe, mostly because I couldn't stand Capt. Kathryn Janeway, one of the world's most awful characters.  But now, now I am Cabana Boy to Amanda Tapping, the New One True Space Babe, and I'm much happier, because Samantha Carter is a character worth appreciating.

She's smarter than Janeway, and far more secure about it.  She doesn't need to tear the people around her down in order to build herself up.  She has no compulsion to touch all the men around her on the chest.  Samantha Carter is both capable of following and giving orders, and she's been known to be wrong a time or two.  Her primary hobby seems to be work, which is admittedly a flaw, but she also likes to tinker with motorcycles, and what can you say about a woman who likes big, powerful machines between her legs?  Holy Hannah!

Plus, she's a total babe.  If only she had her own command . . . but no, we should never expect that much perfection this side of Nirvana.

Idolizing Samantha Carter is not without its problems, however.  My shrine is still dedicated to Kate, because those Trek people are all about merchandising.  Stargate has such a long way to go to even approach the shadow of this merchandise megamachine.  We need Samantha Carter action figures!  Hallmark ornaments!  And especially page-a-day calendars so I can build a new and better shrine.  Get busy with the merchandising, people!

First off: they're not as bad as shows from the 1960s that insisted every title had to follow the same pattern. Everything was "Night of" on Wild, Wild West, and they were always in some sort of "Raid," even when they weren't, on Rat Patrol (was that a little tribute to Sam Troy and the boys -- one of them named Jack -- in "The Curse"? Even if it wasn't, it could have been when Daniel hopped that Land Rover over that sand dune). But . . .

Mundane is the word we want here. Redundant works too. "The Enemy Within" -- used by Star Trek. "Shades of Grey" -- the Canadian-spelled version of Next Gen's "Shades of Gray." "Legacy" -- now there's a popular one, favored by Next Gen and Babylon 5, although there they opted for the plural: "Legacies." Long before Stargate got to the "Point of No Return," B5 named both an episode and an entire season that. "New Ground"-- ooh, already covered by Next Gen. "Message in a Bottle" -- beat to the punch by Voyager this time, and Next Gen had already done "Ship in a Bottle." "Rules of Engagement" -- oh, wait, that was DS9. "Nemesis"? "Learning Curve"? -- oops, no, those belonged first to Voyager, as did "Demon," only one 's' removed from Stargate's "Demons." "Tin Man"? "Family"? Next Gen titles once again. "A Matter of Time," then. No, stands to reason that it was only a matter of time before we'd find a Next Gen episode with that title as well. Next Gen also did "The Game," which is not dissimilar to "The Gamekeeper," just like SG's "In the Line of Duty" and NG's "The First Duty." And, while once again not specifically the same, "Holiday" is reminiscent of Next Gen's "Captain's Holiday" -- and, of course, the Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn movie.

When not conscripting titles from other space shows, Stargate lets us know it's an Apophis episode by inserting the word "Serpent" in the title: "Within the Serpent's Grasp," "Serpent's Lair," "Serpent's Song," and "Serpent's Venom."

Voyager used lots of one-word titles, as does Stargate, and the word that immediately springs to mind is: bor-ring! Unless the word is electrifying, like B5's "Z' Ha' Dum." That's a cool title, but then that show knew how to come up with them. J. Michael Straczynski hit the titular zenith with "Falling Toward Apotheosis." When's the last time you had to look a TV episode title up in the dictionary?

We didn't know jack: competing at the CU Trivia Bowl in its heyday, when folks would come from all over the country to spend a week in a darkened ballroom, testing their knowledge of arcana.

You Don't Know Jack
Teal'c It or Leave It
Sam and Janet Evening
Daniel Go To Jackson [probably funnier if you know Johnny Cash songs]
Jack, Daniel's in Lynchburg
Hammond Eggs
Falling Toward Apophis, or, perhaps, if it's the episode where he finally recognizes all his previous actions as wrong, "Serpent, Sinner!"
(I thought of these myself!)
Actually, "Blood of Sokar" would have been far more provocative and accurate than "The Devil You Know" (which, as Stargate titles go, is one of the better ones), and they missed a potentially good line by not suggesting that one could sokar in his own blood if there were enough of it.

Stargate and women: see if you can find the theme.

The team's female member: Samantha. Jack O'Neill's ex-wife: Sara. Daniel's graduate-school girlfriend: Sarah. (I'm guessing at the spellings here.) Teal'c's temple priestess girlfriend: Sha'nauc. Daniel's wife: Sha're.

According to my 1936 Webster's Fifth Collegiate Dictionary, "j" is also a sibilant in the English language, although the lexicographers probably meant "j"s with that little French accent, such as in "jejune" (which isn't actually French at all, but rather, Latin, even though those Romans didn't have a 'j' in their alphabet. But perhaps I digress). But let's just go with it, and add the SGC's doctor: Janet, and Sam's Gou'ald buddy: Jolinar. (Blowing the curve completely is Teal'c's ex-wife Drey-Auc.) Then don't forget Jack, who once went by the name Jonah, very similar to Carter's old flame Jonas. And Jack is similar to Jackson, as in Daniel's last name. Sam's dad is named Jacob; and, although it really starts with another letter, the sound is the same: George Hammond. (Linguistically, this show just doesn't score points for originality.)