I’m going to be honest with you all. I am not big on sci-fi as a genre.

Sure, I have a Blade Runner tattoo, and sure I like, say, the OG Predator or Alien or whatever the fuck. Is Terminator 2 sci-fi? Maybe. I love T2, probably more than most people. But where a lot of my pals will go gaga over the newer installments of these types of franchises, I am perfectly content to watch Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde for the 1000th time. Even when it comes to fiction I am not huge on the genre. Loving Harlan Ellison is the closest I get to liking any of it. My favorite Harlan Ellison short story is “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin“, and that’s because it combines weird monsters with fucking and drugs. It’s pretty great. They should let me make a movie about it.

Anyway, entry 1b of Spader September was Stargate, a movie I maybe saw once before but, if I did, it meant nothing to me and I don’t remember it at all. It’s the second movie in a row where James plays a professor. In this one he’s a lot more charming and his hair is a lot more shaggy, which I think is really cute. You also have Kurt Russell looking batshit with a crew cut, barely resembling Wyatt Earp or the leather daddy Santa I have come to love him for.

But it’s all about, like, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and wormholes and an alien named Ra (The Crying Game’s Jaye Davidson) and a daughter being offered to Dr. Jackson (Spader) as a gift, which, I mean, lucky gal, but the optics are bad. There’s all this strife and threats of blowing up Earth and the overthrowing of things and trying to get back home and to be honest, much like, say, Star Wars, I really do not care. My biggest takeaway (beyond how perfect James Spader is) is that I want to watch The Crying Game. Maybe in No(ir)vember? And why bother to try to get back to goddamn AMERICA? Dr. Jackson is right to stay on whatever the hell the planet they’re on is named. I don’t even think they say!

(Side note: while I recognize Erick Avari, the actor who plays Kasuf, as the convenience store owner in Encino Man, we will be seeing him again this month in the classic Spaderotica Dream Lover.)

I am not suggesting Stargate is a bad movie. It’s not. It’s just not a movie I could not get into last night, probably because I had taken a hydrocodone and a muscle relaxer because my back is completely fucked, and I was feeling a lil sleepy beepy. Maybe I’ll revisit it when I am not half comatose. Maybe I won’t. I mean, this movie started a whole franchise and I literally cannot comprehend that. What else could there possibly be to say??

I do have a VHS of it so that’s cool, anyway.

And yes, it’s on Tubi.

This has been my Stargate update. A Stardate, if you will. See you tomorrow.