"Novastar" is a Belgian band. "Belgium" is a country in Europe, and, coincidentally, the most offensive word in the entire galaxy. How can you lose?
The title is a reference to the almost-unwatchably-bad Yvonne "Batgirl" Craig film of the same name from 1968. We'll revisit this hommage after a fashion next week

Dennis Hopper, 74, has died of prostate cancer.
While generally thought of as a straight character actor, he had a surprisingly large number of genre credits, including 1960s TV appearances on The Twilight Zone and The Time Tunnel. In SF films, he's probably best known for his very good performance in the very, very very bad "Waterworld." He was also in "Super Mario Brothers," "Firestarter 2," and "My Science Project."

Sen. Bill Nelson is adding one more Shuttle Flight to NASA's budget for 2011. NASA says that this would help them to transition their Florida and Huston shuttle work force but top administrators have concerns about not having a rescue shuttle ready to launch if Atlantis had problems.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1005/27nelsonsts135/

- Watched "Wall-E" again, and found it held up really really well. I liked it as much as the first time I watched it. Then I hunted down my initial review of it ( http://www.republibot.com/content/movie-review-%E2%80%9Cwall-e%E2%80%9D-... ) and was stunned to find how short it was, and yet how on-target, even though there's a whole lot of ramble in there. No tedious play-by-play.

I think this is my new favorite cartoon. There’s just a lot to like here. The voice acting is good, the music is generally above average, Six is cool, and there’s just a really neat visual style that has a signature different from any other Warners show on the air.

P’andor, the Russian-accented alien from last week’s episode, is permanently sealed in armor. (What they would have called an “Encounter Suit” on Babylon 5) Now slumming on earth, he’s none to happy about this, and is paying various safecrackers and hoods to try and break him out of it. Kevin, in his occasional hood mode, decides to help out.

This is just really sad news, but Gary Coleman passed away earlier today. I know he really isn't genre related, but my heart as always kind of ached for him - his life could not have been easy as filled as it was with illness and the sense of not being able to trust anyone close.
Below is a song that my co-workers wrote about him over ten years ago and that we had pulled out of moth balls a couple of months ago and did a FanVid type of treatment for just to put it out on the internet.

- Read chapters 1 and 2 of "Divine Invasions," the PKD bio, and I'm as ever enraptured with Mr. Sutin's writing style, though I'm thinking he reads too much into some events.

Tonight, for better or worse, FlashForward ends.
Was it a good death?
Let me save you some time. NO.
But read on anyway....
Recap
We open with all our main characters trying to alternately avoid or collide with the future as seen in their flashforwards.

The Shuttle Atlantis landed for possibly the last time yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center ending its 32 flight. Atlantis will now be readied as a rescue ship for Discovery’s flight in September. NASA is lobbing congress for one more flight of Atlantis is use the last external fuel tank and solid booster set.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts132/100526land/