We have a new addition to The Geek Beat team: Christine Mathias will joining the crew as a correspondent covering geek entertainment. Christine has been in radio programming for ten years, developing entertainment content for morning shows and acting as pop culture guru for news/talk hosts at KGO in San Francisco. In her own words, “No one has ever loved television more than her.”

The advancement of Geek Culture surprises her, because of the years of cockeyed looks she endured when she espoused her love of Greek Mythology, Superheroes, and the Dragonlance Chronicles.

Oh, and she was in marching band. If that doesn’t cement her geek cred, we don’t know what will.

So, welcome, Christine! Your first deadline is tomorrow. No, really. We’re not kidding.

At last week’s Comic-Con, yours truly had the unbelievable good luck to interview Jewel Staite about her new role as Dr. Jennifer Keller on Stargate: Atlantis. Jewel talks about what it’s like being the new kid on Atlantis, compares Dr. Keller to her favorite role, Kaylee on Firefly/Serenity, and comments on how much she hates doing “doctor babble.”

To play the video, click the image above. We recommend you have QuickTime installed before you try this.

Note: Special thanks to the Done The Impossible folks for acting as my impromptu video crew when the originally scheduled group press conference was switched to one-on-one meetings at the last minute. Thanks also to Brian Wiser for alerting me to the switch and filling in as my sound guy.

When you tire of trolls, elves leave you empty, and ancient nameless horrors only elicit a yawn, there’s nothing quite so renewing as a good bout of role-playing in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian near-future where the only magic is the death that your boom-stick rains upon the legions of mutant abominations that roam a fractured landscape.

I am speaking, of course, of the Fallout series. Perhaps the most cathartic role-playing game ever to grace a pixel, the series’ combination of skills-based battle, state-of-the-art (for the time) graphics, and darkly humorous storylines is a breath of fresh air in a genre that takes itself entirely too seriously. (more…)

I’m fairly sure this will be the one and only time I will ever say this, but I wish I had the right to vote in Finland. In what may well be the first time a politician running for a national office has based his campaign on appealing to geeks (and not just any geeks, mind you, but geeks who understand Klingon), Jyrki J.J. Kasvi, current member of Finland’s Parliament, just relaunched his website in four languages – Finnish, Swedish, English and, yes, Klingon.

“pe’vIl parmaq vIvoq. qo’ vIDub vIneH; motlhwI’ vIqaD vIneH; ngoch ngachlu’taHvIS qechmey chu’ vIchel vIneH,” states Kasvi in Klingonese. Translation: “I strongly trust in love. I want to improve the world, challenge standards, and add new ideas when policies are being debated.” (more…)

I recently tried an early beta version of what Turbine Inc. and Midway Games Inc. hope will be the next big thing in online role-playing games – Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. While this was a limited-access beta test meant to gauge server performance (the open beta test doesn’t start until the end of March), the platform was solid, the graphics were awesome and the overall gaming experience, while enjoyable, will be nothing new to the millions of players already addicted to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. (more…)