Right when Marty “fashioned a skate board” to escape Biff instead of just running, as one Master Pancaker humorously pointed out, the screen snapped off, and it became clear that only emergency lighting remained.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t planned,” one of the Master Pancakers yelled into the crowd since the microphones were now useless. Then they decided to perform their movie mid-point skit early with the help of anyone in the audience who had a phone, who were asked to shine it at the stage to create a spotlight. “That’s right, for once we actually want you to use your phones,” one said.

In the skit, Marty was portrayed as energetic and jumpy as a 12-year-old boy. The other was dressed as Doc from the future with a very convincing Doc Brown voice. There was also a Libyan who had a cardboard volxwagen bus hung around his waist who made several appearances to stretch out the skit. He often punished audience members who sang along to “American Pie” with vocal machine gun noises and the sticking of his fingers in their beer.

Marty had several good stalling tactics, like Doc continued to die until he wrote a more and more detailed note about how to survive the Libyans. Just when this got tedious, the Doc Master Pancaker pointed out, “If you keep that up, the audience will know you’re stalling until the lights come back on,” which elicited some laughter. Marty also made the humorous joke of, “In my time, we don’t have electricity.”

The lights did not come back on and it seemed likely that they wouldn’t for a while. So the Master Pancakers recruited audience members to play the other characters so they could perform the entire rest of the movie for us. The audience members they picked held their own and even provided decent jokes in this improvised version of “Back to the Future.” For example, the one playing George McFly quipped “We got a divorce” when Lorraine McFly was late to the stage at one point. Once she appeared he saved it with, “She came back…for the alimony,” which the audience found pretty entertaining.

Even though everyone who experienced the blackout was given a free movie pass for the future, I don’t think anyone felt gypped after experiencing a live, improvised “Back to the Future” performed by Master Pancake and others all the way up to the famous last line: “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads,” which was enthusiastically yelled by the audience in unison. I think many would agree that it was actually a once in a lifetime experience. But I will say that going to the ladies with only the light of your iPhone is a little challenging.

When it comes to the blackout, it turns out there were several transformers that failed in a row and overloaded power lines. This created a 12-hour electricity outage boxed in by Congress, Red River, Sixth Street and 12th Street. So it’s a good thing that Master Pancake wasted no time in performing their skit and that the audience did not wait for the lights to come back on to finish the movie.

Until I decided to cherry-pick this season, I had only seen parts of Ally McBeal while flipping channels and found it pretty entertaining (aside from the dancing baby. That’s a little too weird for me.) But it’s a very odd and amazing show with a lot of things going for it, many that will surprise you. It’s also very empowering (I love how Ally constantly shoves men on the street who walk into her and don’t apologize.) and Calista Flockhart is captivating. I’m not surprised that this show won an Emmy, and now that I’ve seen the famous season four, I just might start it from the beginning. But I’d skip season five. Though Jr. in actually in it once, it’s a hallucination and not worth it, and I just don’t like the direction the whole show goes that season or the very underwhelming conclusion of the whole series.

Some great Ally-Larry moments:
(This one’s even better in English.)

But that said, I did get annoyed with the never-ending, unfulfilling will-they-won’t they pattern, as well as the fact that the episodes all got a little repetitive in formula (get a case, solve the case, almost kiss, but don’t) as with many crime shows, usually without the kissing part. But I did enjoy that it wasn’t nearly as gross as CSI. (I can deal with bones; I’m not so good with body parts and gore. But be warned. This show is not free from gore either. It’s just no where near the level of CSI and all its spawn.)

By the time I no longer lived alone, I felt like I had missed the “Bones” boat. I felt way too behind to catch-up. I could stream the whole thing on Netflix, but I also suspected that I’d quickly get annoyed with endless sexual tension and formulaic story-lines and quit, so I decided to cherry-pick. I googled, “Which episodes do they kiss in Bones?” and this is what came up:

• Season 3, Episode 9 “The Santa in the Slush.” (They kiss under the mistletoe.)
• Season 5, Episode 16 “The Parts in the Sum of the Whole.” (Flashes back to their first case which also equals their first kiss and explains why they already knew and seemingly disliked each other in the pilot.)
• Season 6, Episode 22 “The Hole in the Heart” (Bones stays over at Booth’s and there’re hints that something happened.)
• Season 6, Episode 23 “The Change in the Game.” (Bones announces that she’s pregnant.)

That works for me since I watched most of Seasons 1–3 before I wussed out, but if that’s not quite enough show for you, Elizabeth from Yahoo Answers shared this insightful list of episodes that are particularly important for the Bones/Booth relationship.

Happy watching, hopefully free from annoyingly unfulfilling sexual tension. And if you’re interested in catching up on the new season, you can see most Season 7 episodes on the Fox website here.

Another resolution I always list but never seem to accomplish is “eat better.” Nutrition is fairly complicated. In fact, I dropped that class in college because I didn’t understand it—that and it was at 9 a.m. on a Friday morning which conflicted with my hangover recovery time. So I knew to accomplish that goal, I’d really need to dumb it down to what exactly I need to do to eat healthy. So through some googling, I found that the recommended daily amounts of certain food groups break down like this:

Food Group	Recommended minimum servings each day
Grains	At least 6 ounces of grains (half of those should be whole grains)
Vegetables	2 to 3 cups
Fruits	1½ to 2 cups
Milk and milk products	3 cups
Meat and Beans	5 to 6½ ounces

So then I thought about designing some pretty odd meals for breakfast and lunch that could possibly include all these foods in one day. (Dinner “is what it is,” since I live with a boy who cooks some delicious form of meat and cheese every night and I don’t enjoy cooking. So at least my meat group is covered.) But for my other meals, I’m on my own. So I’d better make them count. This is the plan I’ve come up with.

Eating Plan:

Breakfast: oat cereal (I’m allergic to whole-grain wheat but one could certainly substitute this), plain non-fat yogurt (in place of milk), blue berries (a true super fruit), banana or apple slices and cashews all thrown together. I call this Super Cereal, because it includes the grains, fruit, nuts and milk products I need for the day. And though it sounds strange, it’s actually surprisingly tasty.

Lunch: Salad-less salad: You may have seen this in the “Chickster Cookbook,” but I brought it back because I’m just not fond of lettuce. I find it to be a bland filler food that doesn’t even fill me up. But I do, on the other hand, love artichoke hearts, asparagus and avocados, which is exactly what’s in this. So that easily satisfies my vegetable servings for the day. See this link for a more detailed recipe. But if you also have an irrational hatred of merely applying heat to things, you can substitute canned asparagus and just mix, but it isn’t as good.

Dinner: I’ll try to stick to 6 ounces of meat, which I’ve heard resembles the size of a deck of cards. (Small for my taste, but I’ll give it a try.)

So there is my broken-down and easy-to-follow path to eating better in 2012. Surely, I can’t eat those exact meals for more than a couple of weeks before I have to change it up for variety, but it gives me a place to start. And while the ingredients run out, I’ll have time to build a new eating plan.

Now on to the rest of my 2012 Resolutions/Habits:

• Relax More. (I’ve decided I can accomplish this by streaming everything good on Netflix Instant. Any suggestions?)
• Read More. (A good place to start is popular titles. I’m currently reading “Catching Fire,” the sequel to “The Hunger Games.” So far it’s an amazing series.)
• Drink 8 glasses of water a day. (This is a good idea for general health and weight loss. I once used a water bottle but they’re never dishwasher safe, which leads to gross, accidental soap ingestion from clumsy hand washing. I bought a tervis tumbler and dare to put it on the top rack of the dishwasher and that’s working so far, though this has distorted some of my past water bottles. [Why is every form of reusable water receptacle not dishwasher safe? If someone would just design one that was, they’d bank.])
• Revise novel and finish second novel. (Plan to work on both at least 2 hours a day.)
• Survive the solar flare. (Find a bunker and stock-up on food.)
• Survive Zombie apocalypse. (Stock-up on ammo and research tactics by watching the new season of “The Walking Dead.” Make sure bunker has DVR.)

So there you have it. What are your New Year’s habits that will help accomplish your resolutions?

I think my main prejudice against this show, aside from the title, is that the heroine does not maximize her natural beauty. I’ve met America Ferrera and she is gorgeous! It’s strange to me that they go so far—with the adult braces, huge glasses and frizzy hair—to hide this. I know that’s the title, and it’s probably a prominent theme of the Colombian soap opera it’s based on (“Yo soy Betty, la fea”), but it still seems that someone who works at a fashion magazine would at least know enough to pluck her eyebrows. Though I do agree with the overall message of the story (women are beautiful even if they’re not size zero), there are many things outside the weight realm that we can actually control about appearance. Surely she marches to the beat of her own drummer and is charming and beautiful even despite her sometimes comical appearance, but I can’t help watching and just waiting for a make-over episode. (Is this it? Is this where she gets pretty?) I suspect it might be at the very end or never, which makes me feel shallow, but come on, if I had bushy eyebrows and adult braces…I wouldn’t, for the greater good, and to break through other people’s perceptions of me. Appearance does matter, unfortunately. She would do so much better in her career if she accepted that and worked with what she has. (The weight thing though, I totally agree with. Women should look like women and not sticks. Women should be able to, you know, eat something.)

But on to the other charms of the show. It is certainly a dramedy. It’s a nice mix of light and dark humor and over-the-top soap opera story lines, including murder, poisonings and stolen artificial assimilation—most of which is provided by the stomach-turningly evil Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams). In fact, the first two midseason finales had me gasping at the screen and yelling: “What! What?! WHAT?!” to the point that my husband even pulled himself away from Warcraft long enough to ask, “WHAT are you watching?”

I haven’t found the actual season finales quite as exciting though. For some reason they tend to save their best stuff for the middle of the season, at least so far. So I look forward to continuing with the adventure and I hope that I finally see an America Ferrera I recognize!

Updated 12-22-11 (*Spoiler Alert*): Well there is a makeover episode as I hoped, though it isn’t exactly what you think. But here is a screenshot of ugly Betty, pretty. But don’t worry if you’re one of the purists out there. This isn’t her look for the rest of the show—just this particular episode. She keeps the trendy glasses, but does lose the braces and the frizziness to her hair, thankfully. Though her hair only appears this gorgeously curled in this episode, unfortunately.

Now that I’ve finished the show, I am pretty satisfied with the overall story as well as where the show starts to head suddenly in the last two episodes. (I wonder if they learned late in the season that they weren’t being renewed?) They tied up more loose ends than I expected in the last two episodes, rather quickly, but somehow it worked. The only thing that didn’t work for me was the ending. I thought they did a great job leading up to the ending I had always heard about but never really believed could happen, but they amazed me by actually making it possible for the characters to go there. Just to then turn around and not go there. That part was disappointing. They set-up the perfect ending and didn’t follow-through, like I assumed they would because the show was over. Instead, they just kind of left it hanging and open, which is too bad. But even though it didn’t end the way I wanted it to, it gave the hint that it would end that way eventually. But I had always heard a rumor about how the show ended that didn’t turn out to be true. I wonder if ”Yo soy Betty, la fea” had ended the way that was rumored. I wish this one had as well! But I won’t give any more away. Hopefully, you’ll give “Ugly Betty” a chance and see for yourself. It’s still worth a watch, even for just a strong hint at the ending you want.

Taking place at the Austin Convention Center this weekend, this event is nerd heaven, and I have no shame admitting that I spent the whole day there yesterday and left very satisfied. (What? Nerds are in.)

Need a pair of twilight contact lens so you can dress as a vamped version of yourself next Halloween? Check out the Exoticlenses.com booth. Need a samurai sword or steam punk attire of any type? There are multiple booths dedicated to these themes. Need a funny T-shirt that references your favorite pieces of pop culture? You have definitely come to the right place. Just want some pictures of fellow Austinites dolled-up in some amazing Cosplay? There is no better event for this.

Want to meet/take pictures with/get autographs from half the cast of Buffy? This is your chance to meet Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase), Mercedes McNab (Harmony Kendall), James Marsters (Spike) and Juliet Landau (Drusilla). They’re just there, out in the open, and you can walk by their booth multiple times and stare at them like zoo animals, or buy an autograph and actually talk to them. I’m too cheap to pay for anything other than a picture with James Marsters, because come on. Who doesn’t want a picture with arguably the most iconic cast member? (Though he really looks different without his white hair.)

Besides, Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) and Adam Baldwin (Firefly) are also each amazingly nice and Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) is even smaller in person than you’d expect. I’m talking munchkin-sized, which is just entertaining.

So here’s your chance to nerd it up at Austin Comic Con. Day passes are only $25 and today you can still catch a panel about everything Dr. Who at 2:45 and a pop culture trivia showdown at 3:45 p.m., involving cult hits like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Star Wars” and “Star Trek.”

So what did I think? It certainly hits all the proper zombie-esque notes. Excessive Gore? Check. (In fact, in the most recent episode, Boondock-Saints guy graphically cut open the stomach of a zombie to make sure it hadn’t eaten a little girl. Gross, but they just get points for having someone from “Boondock Saints” in this show.) No feasible explanation for why corpses become animated? Check. (Of course not! It’s a zombie show!) No blasphemous running zombies? Check. (Hell’s yeah for the proper “slow crawl!”) Aggravating love triangle I could do without? Check. (“I’m Cajun and unattractive! Why don’t you love me?” “Because my husband came back and he’s a bad ass? And I’m pretty sure that because of Armageddon he’s been promoted to sheriff by default or just clear bad-ass-ness?” Seriously, who cares? Though it is a well-written show, so I’m sure we won’t be able to get away without some human-interest drama. I just wish that part were more interesting.) But still, many more in the check column than the minus.

“The Walking Dead” is on AMC, every Sunday at 8 p.m. But if you missed the most recent episode, you won’t see new episodes on Netflix quite yet. To watch episodes from the current season, you’ll have to find them on iTunes or amctv.com.

Of course, the first few trips I didn’t fully notice this strange edition and assumed it was for an MP3 player until, while absentmindedly glancing around during a strenuous pace, I noticed the hook-up looked like it would fit an iPhone perfectly. And it was just under the TV mounted on my machine.

I gleefully plugged it in and sure enough, I was able to watch “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” in seconds, accessed from my iTunes library. This is incredibly convenient and ups the likelihood of me actually keeping up my workout for a full 45 minutes, four days a week. Sure, there was already a TV there, and I often use my iPhone to read novels, but there’s always something really strange on the Syfy channel at that time, and I’m not always in the mood to use my mental muscles while pushing my physical ones. So I am thrilled by this new advance in technology…even if it is just new to me because I haven’t been to the gym in a while.

Now if I could just remember to bring earphones.

Though I am impressed with the selection of newly aired shows (something Netflix could use), it certainly doesn’t have everything. For instance, if I want to watch “Vampire Diaries” or the new Sarah Michelle Gellar show, “The Ringer” (soapy but entertaining), I’ll probably have to spring for a DVR, watch them on my computer from the discomfort of my computer chair or actually pay attention to when things air, the last option being the least likely.  You also have to sit through commercials to watch things on Hulu Plus, something Netflix doesn’t require. I was, however, impressed that all of “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood” was available on Hulu, something I had to wait for Netflix to send me the last two DVDs of all summer, since they’re not available on Netflix streaming yet and it’s new and popular and Netflix doesn’t order enough anime DVDs, apparently. However, once you select that show through Hulu Plus, most of the episodes have a little “web only” tag on them, which is lame.

Also—and this might have been an isolated incident—I was not impressed that “The Office” episode I tried to watch this evening buffered for eternity, and actually disconnected me from Xbox Live a number of times before I gave up and watched the episode from the discomfort of my computer chair on NBC.com, which defeats the whole purpose of streaming directly to your TV through your Xbox. So hopefully it was a fluke, but if not, Hulu is going to have to decrease their buffering interruptions if they ever want to compete with Netflix. (Netflix has buffering interruptions too, but I’ve never experienced one so long that I gave up on something I was watching.)

So bring it, Hulu. You haven’t hiked prices recently (and then apologized and reverted them) and I’d like to finally catch-up on all the current shows I’m missing without having to invest in a DVR.

Flix is the size of a conventional movie theater with many of the same perks and it also carries many of the same charms as the Alamo Drafthouse, including the quirky trailers before the real previews, a separate bar within the theater and a strict no talking/texting rule.

But it does have two things the Alamo lacks (which I suspect they ripped straight from any Alamo Drafthouse customer feedback they could get their hands on): tables before each chair that slide out to hover just above the moviegoer’s lap (making it much easier to eat) and lights lining each table that ables you to see your receipt without having to light-up your smartphone, which is expressly against the Alamo’s rules, even though they don’t offer such lighting. The lighting is only slightly distracting and very helpful, though at times I do prefer the total darkness of the Alamo. (I’ve become expert at bouncing light from the movie screen off my receipt to barely make out my bill, anyway.)

There are also multiple exits per row that make it less likely that someone will try to slide by you when exiting mid-movie, and you can even completely block any attempts at this by extending your dinner tray into your lap and keeping it there. Though I suppose that could be awkward if a person has no other means of escape, you have the option nonetheless.

But there is something that Flix lacks that the Alamo has, the $13 pitcher of Lone Star. (It doesn’t have Lone Star at all, which is hard for us cheapskates) and the cheapest thing we could get was a pitcher of Dos XX for $15, though it was incredibly tasty and worth the extra $2.

Overall, I really enjoyed Flix, but since I am a purist, I will still always hit the Alamo first. But since I live way up north and Flix is between me and the nearest Alamo location, I will certainly hit Flix instead if it has more convenient showtimes.

Though this time there wasn’t a mega shark or a versus, there were giant piranhas composed of some pretty bad CGI (if it even was CGI—not sure it was that advanced) that grew exponentially and even exploded when they jumped into buildings! It even had “famous” pop princess Tiffany as the sexy scientist who makes out with her co-star at the end because she’s so impressed by how he handled this whole mutant giant piranha situation. Not to mention that the piranhas get so big, they jump into the air and eat and bring down helicopters! Definitely a fun watch…if you like stupid movies, as I apparently do.

It helps that I love Kristen Bell (who plays Marni in this movie) definitely due to her break-out role in “Veronica Mars,” a show that ended far too soon and, unfortunately, without a satisfying ending. Nonetheless, it’s an amazing show, where Bell’s acting was solid all the way through. She’s just as good here, in a movie that’s mostly playful (with many of the funniest moments supplied by Betty White) and mostly about getting back at the “mean girl.” I don’t really agree with the mega happy ending, but it is still entertaining and worthy of a few laughs. I tend to be less forgiving of high school rivals in general, but you could argue that this film is just too mature for me and aiming for a healthier message. Something about some competition being healthy, or unhealthy, or we’re really all above this, blah blah. Still, maybe they should have considered a Scooby-Do ending.