You are... my lucky... star...

Welcome, guests and loyal S&Pers!

Today we're raising a glass and getting the projector fired up.

Today is, at least to your humble pubkeep, an important date in horror history, and in Hallowe'en costuming and effects history as well.

See, today is the 32nd birthday of the Alien... and of Ripley.

On this date in 1979 was introduced to the world one of the greatest horror films of all time.

Yes, I wrote 'horror' and I mean horror. For all of its sci-fi trappings, Alien is as simple and effective an 'old, dark house with a bad thing in it' horror tale as you will find. It is Jaws in space; it is Night of the Living Dead only with one single bad-a** ghoul; it is Hallowe'en with an alien Michael Myers (and a similarly willing-to-fight-for-her-life 'final girl'); it is science fiction only in the way Star Wars, a cowboy western serial, is science fiction -- the scenery might be Asimov but the atmosphere is pure Lovecraft...

So today is the 32nd anniversary of some very important creations -- the alien, the facehugger, the chestburster, and my personal 30+ year crush, the incredibly tall, lanky, strong, sweaty, swearing-like-a-trucker Ripley -- do you remember the first time you ever laid eyes on these now iconic images?

The S&P is running this all day.

We raise a glass and give a heartfelt thank you to Giger, Shusett, O'Bannon, Scott... and of course, Sigourney Weaver.

My God are you kidding me?

You gave us a hero we didn't expect, and didn't even know we needed.

So Elphaba-like.

You were the first woman to make me realize it didn't matter that the hero was a woman, and then that it mattered a whole hell of a lot that you were.

Happy 32nd to the Alien, and to Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo.

-- SIGNING OFF --