"Christa is so endearingly snarky . . . That's a good thing, mind you . . . " -- Marz

    "You write words good. Keep doing it." -- Drew

    " . . . I read the whole thing, and I still want more." -- Nick

    "Christa, you make so much sense it's not even freaking funny." -- Lydia

    "Anyone who has part of my name in them (sound-wise) MUST be amazing." -- Kris

    "I am hungry." -- Kelly

    "If we weren't dead, we'd probably love this." -- Oscar Wilde & Joan of Arc

If AW intends to continue this tradition of glowing reviews, I'm going to have to stop giving it the silent treatment. Besides, if one more ardent fan flings a long-stemmed rose at me in anguish and despair and ever-startling adulation, I'm going to get a thorn in the eye.

Somebody accused me of not being a grown-up geek awhile back, possibly due to my disgustingly chic sense of style. Possibly. Maybe. A little. Quite frankly, I begged to differ. Like so many of my generation, I prefer to keep my geeklish on the down-low, but I know it's still in here somewhere. In my elbow, perhaps. Why, just the other week I happened upon an extremely geeky childhood memory that had all but vanished into the haze of memory.

Every Friday afternoon, you see, like childhood clockwork, there would appear a Legend of Zelda episode on the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. Based on the video game of the same name, of course, this show was like a cheesy, chintzy, childhoodly bonus of love, and I suddenly remembered getting positively bubbly whenever it was on. (For the link -- yes, very funny -- just scroll down on the left and click on "Legend of Zelda" in the list, then click on an episode, and then on the episode-part picture. You can do it. You're almost brilliant.) I tell you, ardent fans, after stumbling upon this oldskool linkage, my gamey youth came back to me in such a whoosh that I wound up watching the entire list of episodes while giggling myself onto the floor. (And that's not an easy giggling achievement, no matter what all these incessant ROFLs would have us believe.) Any show that can remind me of watching my young schoolmates' oh-so-dreamy older brothers play Nintendo for hours on end is aaaaaall right with me.

I'd almost forgotten about Link's sarcastic running gag, "Excuuuuuse me, Princess," a phrase which is practically begging to be put on a disgustingly trendy t-shirt. We haven't witnessed such a cheesy level of eighties sarcasm since the last Garfield holiday special. Also, I never realized that half the fun of this show was seeing Link persistently not get any action. When everything Zelda is said and done, however, it's really amazing how some of one's favorite childhood shows were actually so very, very silly. (Batman excepted, of course. Duh.) Perhaps cartoons simply don't ring cheesily when you're a kid; perhaps the geeky cheese factor only comes with age. Or maybe, just maybe, I have grown out of my geekhood after all.

Oh, the vanilla horrors. Surely unpacking the ol' PS2 will cure me. And my elbow, too.