The Weird Trend Continues!

So tonight my wife wanted to see a Christmas movie. Well, we've seen most of them already. After 100 viewings of the outrageous National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation or a dozen viewings of the very good Elf, or five or six viewings of A Christmas Story, you're ready for something new. So I checked Video On Demand and there was Bad Santa, a film we had never seen (We were out of the country on a two and a half week cruise to Hawaii in 2003 when Bad Santa was in the theaters).

So Bad Santa it is. About halfway through the film Bernie Mac visits a prison in search of the owner of the car that bad Santa Billy Bob Thornton is driving (If you haven't seen the film, it's a long story). In the prison he meets the Father of "the Kid" at whose house Billy Bob is staying. It takes me a few seconds, but this guy I recognize. Not so much by how he looks as by how he sounds.

And it's another Star Trek connection. In this case the ever forgettable Star Trek Voyager. I couldn't remember his name, but I hadn't forgotten his character: Neelix. A quick look on IMDb refreshed my memory and brought me to his name: Ethan Phillips. He looked a little different back in his Voyager days.

It's been a while since I saw an episode of Voyager, but I recall liking the Neelix character at first and then getting real, real tired of him. But by that time I was tired of the whole crew. The show never rang true for me.

So it seems like I see a Star Trek cast member in just about everything I watch these days. Strange trend.