I Can't Believe

It's only Tuesday. I need to sob quietly now.

Take My Love, Take My Land...

but don't take my logos or t-shirts! "Don't annoy someone who has more spare time than you do." That's high-larious.

Boy, now that I think about it, it might be a good thing I wasn't blogging back in the Firefly / Serenity days. I wrote a defect in our test database at the time "They're Cancelling My Show!" Sadly, it was Unresolved. Or maybe Expected Behavior.

When Hinges Creek In Doorless Chambers...

It's Halloween! So how about a few Haunted Mansion Links?

DoomBuggies.com is the be all, end all of Haunted Mansion sites. Everything you wanted to know and then some. Lots of pictures, lots of audio. Here's a nice page on the LP, which when I was growing up WAS the Haunted Mansion.

The Wikipedia page. Yikes, there's a buncha stuff here!

Paul "Ghost Host" Frees (again).

Thurl "Grim Grinning Ghosts" Ravenscroft (he's grrrrrrrrrrrreat!).

And here's a nice article from Jim Hill. The precision grave digger drill team is my favorite.

As much as I love Pirates of the Caribbean, if it were my choice Haunted Mansion would have gotten the really cool movie and Pirates would have gotten Eddie Murphy.

Don't forget, tomorrow is All Saints' Day!

The Definition of Classic

Since the World Series just ended...



Find me a better sketch. (The Dead Parrot Sketch comes close...)

Holdit

Lileks still has it going on. Pretty much the whole Bleat is good today. I identify with the winter sun part, even in Phoenix, with no DST. But the X-3 part: Oh yeah.

Movies: I watched X-Men 3. Might as well have called it X-Men: Let’s Just Kill Off Everyone, Then. I liked the second one, but never really loved the franchise, to use that horrid word. The entire mutant-as-a-metaphor was insulting, anyway –if you know anything about kids you know that a teen with the ability to shoot fire out of his ears would not be shunned as a weirdo freak but elected class president on general principle: dude! Awesome! I can understand parents getting upset if their kid was blue and covered with hairy nodules, but the idea that parents would consider their kid “sick” if she had the telekinetic ability to raise every car in the neighborhood nine feet in the air – please. We have parents who will go across the ocean to adopt a Down’s Syndrome baby; are we to believe that the majority of American parents reject their kids because they can levitate or cough up gold by the quart or exude perfectly formed Neapolitan Ice Cream bricks from their hindquarters? Far from persecuting them, they’d get their own reality shows. Storm would be a TV meteorologist in New York. As for your morning commute, I’ll see what I can do. Stay classy, Manhattan.

And then there’s Wolverine - he’s Troubled and Frowny and Haunted, even though he appears to be a 35 year old man living in a high school with no job, surrounded by good-looking women, and able to kill whoever he wants without any sort of legal repercussions. You almost want some mutant to confront him in the kitchen some night: what you so mad about, anyway? You can heal from a gunshot to the head in six seconds and you got spikes coming out of your hands. Yeah, well, it hurts when the spikes come out. Oh really? I shoot liquid nitrogen everytime I pee. That’s my mutation. I go by the name of Holdit. Wanna switch?

I'll never look at Wolvie the same way again.

One Score to Rule Them All

I'm listening to the Complete Fellowship of the Ring score. As with many Jackson Lord of the Rings things, I wish I liked the movies better, because the treatment is gorgeous. It's the kind of treatment that Star Wars fans wish we got. (THEY. Star Wars fans wish THEY got. Grrrrr. Sput!)

This is an interesting listening experience for me, because I saw Fellowship once. I listen to the original CD a lot. (Wow. Pre-iPod. Has it been so long?) So my biggest connection to this music comes from the novel and the previously released recording. It's not like listening to Star Wars where I can picture what's happening on screen note for note. (Even the music that was tracked to a scene and later dropped.) Lord of the Rings, even more than Star Wars, is very very VERY theme driven. This set has EXHAUSTIVE notes written by Film Score Monthly's Doug Adams. It comes with a nice little book that details EVERY SINGLE THEME from the score (did you know there is a Theme for Elvish Longing?), how it's used, why it's used, what different setting are meant to convey. It's a scholarly work. It's extensive enough that the actual track descriptions have to be included on-line as a PDF. I gather Adams will be including all of these notes in a book. Lucky Tolkien fans!

So it's like listening to a symphonic story. You are introduced to all of the cast, shown all the sets, and then listen to them wander around for three CDs. It's Peter and the Wolf on steroids.

What I just wanted to say when I started this was "Wow, dude, this is a really awesome score!" and that it's really nice to read the novel with. I don't like the movies much, but yowza what a score!

The Complete Two Towers will be out next month.

BSG Monday - Collaborators

Well, that was fun. And nothing blew up this week. There have been great eps of BSG where nothing blew up. This is a really good one where nothing blew up. They would have had a great one, but they just couldn't help leaning on the "The President is rounding up common folk from main street USA and throwing them in Gitmo!" button. Which really hit a sour note. Not that Zarek was doing it. That was note perfect. Or even that Roslin condemned it. Just the more than slightly pretentious speeches that she and Zarek give to each other. Cylons don't get trials. They get airlocks. Laura has never wavered on that policy. Well, not much. I hope that they didn't write Zarek out of the main Colonial political scene for this lame point.

Again, will someone please point out that we don't have enough people to be performing random executions? Please? Get to the moral ramifications eventually, sure, but we're running out of bodies! Someone mention that!

The drama was terrific. The joy of a show where important, recurring characters buy the farm (no, not THE Farm) on an alarmingly regular basis is that when Felix Gaeta is put in a launch tube and is resigned to die, you bleeding well think it's going to happen! Especially since this IS the show that would lay down in Tyrol finding out just MOMENTS AFTERWARDS that Gaeta was the Inside Man, and roll around in it, and not shake it off before it comes in the house!

Speaking of pain, EyeTigh is still doing great work. Putting Ellen's things back in the closet was delicious. I loved that Michael Hogan didn't play him drunk in the CiC. He's not drunk, but he IS pissed. Yes, sober EyeTigh can still get kicked out of the CiC. Still no eye-patch.

I loved how they played Gaeta. New Caprica is still going on for him. He knows it's not ending anytime soon, so a nice cozy airlock doesn't sound so bad. I've always liked Felix. Now he's one of my favorites. Now he needs a haircut.

They're pretty honest about the fact that Kara will NOT be nice about this sort of thing. She will NOT be the good guy. Nice break up scene with Anders. So Kara is free again. Duala-Adama's (ADA) days may be numbered. She may be a Cylon. Kara may be a Cylon. Both of them might be Cylons. Or Lee could be Cylon. (Later this season Fat Lee will be confronted with a dozen naked copies of himself that have his old ripped body - HT: JimS.) Poor Lee.

We still have to wait for Kara to mock Fat Lee. *sigh* Date with a jump rope / Keep jumping was one of my favorite exchanges of the show.

The Gaius Baltar show is getting fun again. Nice Cylon interiors. Not surprisingly, the show makers have watched 2001 and Close Encounters a whole lot. And don't we all love Doug Trumbull?

Six is still interesting when she's with Baltar. Is it my imagination or is Three coming on to him? I mean, eeeeggghhhhh! Men all over the world have long ago resigned themselves to the fact that the worst men get all the women. But Gaius Baltar?!?

No Sharon OR Boomer this week. Nary an Eight to be seen. So Adama may sleep easy still.

Galactica's new Beat to New Caprica look is nice. It's a nice consistency. Colonial One does not look good. The weathering makes it look like a foot long model. We deserve better from the BSG effects crew. Of course these shots are now part of the stock library, so we're probably stuck with them. They must have been thrilled to hear "Sorry guys, our two hero ships have changed. All of our stock footage is no good anymore. Get to work." They probably won't put the Enterprise back in the fleet now. I'm sad.

And of course: They countdown is back! Yay!

SPOILER!

Colonial fleet rescues detainees at Walt Disney World!




And for those of you that missed it the first time 'round:



It's BSG night! Whoot!

Set Sail - No, Not That One

Some mornings I just really wish I had Bill Gates' money. Sure, Hillary will be there, but nothing is perfect. Hmmm, which would I wish more, that the Intrepid were under power or that Sen. C. wasn't there?

The Apology Headline

Why do headlines like this get run?

"Muslim cleric apologizes for rape remark"

And then the first line is "Australia's most prominent Islamic cleric vowed Thursday to stand strong against widespread outrage" - HOW is that an apology?

The media are toasters. Never forget.

A few months ago they ran the same headlines for Pope Benedict. He didn't apologize either. The pattern seems to be 1) Startling comment 2) commentator says "I'm sorry if that bugged you 3) Headline "SO AND SO APOLOGIZES!" 4) Public consciousness now thinks so and so apologized. Grrrrr!

Speaking of Benedict, in comparison, how will this guys comments be responded to? Will anyone blow him up or threaten to behead him to show how non-violent we are? Will anyone threaten his daughters to prove that cats don't care WHERE the meat is kept?

Waleed Aly, a member of the Islamic Council of Victoria state, said al-Hilali's comments would result in more antagonism toward Muslims.

"I am expecting a deluge of hate mail," he said. "I am expecting people to get abused in the street and get abused at work."

First off, when has this happened? Ever? Second, can they blame us when we are shown uncovered meat like this? Oh, wait, we actually take some responsibility for our actions, so I guess that won't happen either.

Step Away From the Computer

Ok, I'm not a Civ fan, or any other of those life sucking games. Sim City, all that stuff. See? I don't even know the names. (Roller Coaster Tycoon. I love that game. That's it.) But I know enough to know the name Sid Meier is a warning. It's dangerous. If he ever hit a genre that interested me, I'm in trouble. I understand this.

So this has me a little worried.

"Airlock" Moves Into the White House

B.J. over at the TrekBBS did this one. Now he just has to do a wider view with a Battlestar.

Go Hang a Salami...

Since Bob can't read the BSG posts, this one's for you. (Yep, it's there. It's about 2 minutes and 5 seconds in.)



(Here's the original.)

You know, this almost makes me look back fondly on TPM. (Mind you, eps II and III do the same thing.)

Face it, Al's a genuius.

Math Humor

This is my wife's fault, otherwise I wouldn't bother you with this. (Hee. Yeah, right.) She has asked me to bring to her attention all stupid math jokes. I, of course, think it's HIGH-LARIOUS.

Comic is, of course, from Rockwood.

Amanda Grayson - RIP

For those of you that missed it, Jane Wyatt passed away this weekend. She was 96.

It's Monday - Must be BSG

Bob: Quit reading and go start watching these. If you catch up quickly, you can get this season on iTunes for three or four bucks.

Well. Wasn't that just a heck of a ride? As in: Battlestar jumps to about 5 or 6 thousand feet above ground and FALLS while spitting out Vipers kind of ride? Whoooo! Never saw that coming even a little bit. They even showed the burning Galactica in the Boom Boom Booms. See? The BBBs are good for you.

We all knew Pegasus was going to ride in to the rescue, but they waited to show it to us until the very MOMENT that we all changed our minds and figured we were wrong. (C'mon - this show WILL kill off Bill or Lee Adama some day, I have almost no doubt of that.) THEN we see the Beast's missiles. And there was much rejoicing. (Wasn't it Blake's Seven that ran the last few seasons without Blake? No reason why Battlestar Galactica has to have the Battlestar Galactica in it.)

I'm told that the "Next Week" actually showed the Pegasus getting blown up. That's it, I have foresworn the "Next Weeks". You poor suckers. That was one of the best moments of the show.

As the Warthog asked (and I'll be very disappointed if the show doesn't): Why does Laura get to be president again? I can see it now: "The campaign of the illegitimate Roslin presidency is politicizing the occupation of and escape from New Caprica to further its own ends." Of course, it was nice to see Tom Zarek call her "the President". I want the body count on the white board back.

The Tighs - He's the new Galen Tyrol - i.e. the character who's life sucks the most. He holds the whole resistance together at horrendous personal and physical cost. And when they get back on the deck of the Galactica everyone ignores him. Ahhhhh. SWIMW still hates him. I'll miss Ellen. She's the sort of character who makes this show terrific (I've become a big Gaius Baltar fan too). Nobody is black or white in this show (Bill A. comes close). During the occupation she was the character who did the most good and the most evil, often simultaneously. I think it says everything about their relationship that he waited until she was unconscious to say "I love you".

Thank heavens that Bill Adama got rid of the lip rat. Although, by all rights he should have had a beard. And Lee is still fat for a while. Poor Jamie Bamber. A few more hours a day in makeup for you. (So, what, is Lee taking ALL the food in the Adama quarters? Does Anastasia Adama get up and run laps while Lee sleeps in? 'Cause she's still a stick.) We all dream of the first time that Kara and Lee meet up again so she can torture him over his weight. Poor Lee. Heh.

Nice to see Hot Dog back and saving the day along with the Bucket crew. Heck, Captain Kelly (CiC guy, he was in the mini and few eps after that) even showed up.

Kara - Well, I guess Casey isn't short for Kara's Cylon after all. How was THAT for a kick in the head? Love these guys. But otherwise it was another plot thread that went nowhere, alas. Moore wants you to wonder if Kara didn't go a little Stockholm, and that was clearly the intent, and it would have been fun. But he never gave it to us. It never played out. Kara falling for Casey felt mostly real. She's kind of wired for that. (Wired? Kara's a Cylon!!) Her having anything other than loathing for Leoben didn't. There was no ambivalence, no "maybe it's real". She played along with him to save Casey and then stuck (another) knife in him. Which is too bad. Of all the plot threads left from last season, Leoben showing up at the end looking for Kara was the most exciting. And they did almost nothing with it. Just like they didn't do much with "Sad Lee" last year. The first time around, Leoben thought Kara was special (had a destiny). This time around he just thought HE was special. None of the head games really went anywhere. He wasn't trying to tell Kara anything, he was just trying to break her (and that old chestnut has been done much much better on other shows). *sigh* Ah well, Flesh and Bone is still one of my favorite eps.

Interestingly none of the significant others got axed. There are still three shiny new MARRIAGES in the fleet. (Maybe four? What's the Agathon / Valerii situation?) How often do you see that? I'm sure we'll see triangles of Whedonesque proportions.

Speaking of Triangles Built for Two: I'm wondering where Baltar and Six end up. Or Three for that matter. (And who IS number one? Or the new number two?) Of course Three has Hera now (those pesky prophesies). Baltar with the Cylons could be interesting but for some reason I would be more looking forward to seeing Baltar and Six on their own. We'll see. In all of the occupation (and Baltar now being the Hated Collaborator) it never did come to light that it was Baltar that gave Six all of the defence codes to begin with. Baltar got a few nice scenes. But nothing as interesting as what they should have been able to come up with. At least he and Felix had their last throw down. Felix Gaeta is still the coolest.

You know, Eight still gets called Sharon or Boomer by all that knew her, most times against their better judgment. Why does Six never get called by her name? She had to have had one. She was with Baltar for two years. I know he's shallow, but he's not THAT shallow. (Nice to know that he still has a Six in his head, even though he's living with the real one again. Boy, is he crazy.)

Sharon - not in this episode really. But that will be an interesting fan to see get hit. Not only does she now know that Hera is alive, but now the baby is in the hands (literaly) of the Cylons. Oh, wait, she DOESN'T know. She's still in "Bill Adama would NEVER lie to us about Earth" land. Her and Kara can swap stories. Oh, and where is Sharon mk. 1? I know, this was a single ep that grew into two, so a lot of the characters got "moments" in one ep or the other, not both. Like the Tyrol family. Or Bro. Cavil.

I like how Cavil keeps going on about how the Cylons are now atheists because God is such a human thing to do. But the only Cylon we've seen that thinks this is... Cavil. Heh. Three certainly doens't think that (although she may be a bigger fan of Zeus after this week). Six sure doesn't. It would have been interesting to have seen Baltar and Cavil hang out together.

I have foresworn the "Next Weeks" (page back up) but I watched them this week. So I know that they're rounding up and disappearing the collaborators. I think an issue that doesn't get brought up enough (Adama knows it) is that there are not enough people left to be trying this nonsense. There will be enough dead people without doing the toaster's own work. (We're two years from the annihilation of the colonies. We should start seeing LOTS of little babies when we see the civ population. Especially on the Gemenon ships. That would be an interesting story if the Gemenons start out-breeding the other colonies.)

All in all a very very satisfying conclusion to the New Caprica epic. I'm a little surprised they wrapped it up so quickly. I figured this would be the new face of the show for at least a season. I gather that the intent was to wrap it up even faster. Heh. Silly Ron. (Both the seaon 1-2 and the 2.0-2.5 breaks were meant to wrap up in an episode. Kobol stretched to what? Five? And Pegasus went three.)

Well, on to Earth. Or maybe New Picon.

Boom boom boom

See, in the miniseries of BSG Adama has the following exchange with Starbuck (who is jogging around Glactica, the soon to be plunged-into-a-life-or-death-struggle-on-which-the-fate-of-the-enti- er, retired battlestar):

Adama: What do you hear?
Starbuck: Nothing but the rain.
Adama: Grab your gun and bring in the cat.
Starbuck: Boom boom boom.

This is later repeated when Adama is getting ready to flee a massive Cylon attack and Adama is telling Starbuck to get her and Apollo's broken viper back home or they're going to be left.

So now the rapid fire "This is what you're going to see this week" clips that run after the main titles (accompanied by Bear McCreary's trademark percussion) are called the Boom Boom Booms (see? cause of the drums and cause it's a Starbuck line). Some people hate them. My brother Jeff is one of them. They discontinued them for the first few eps of season two. Then cooler heads (that don't hang on the Glactica message boards as much, I'd wager) prevailed and they brought them back. Mission: Impossible used to do this, so did Space: 1999.

They really don't spoil anything nearly as much as the "previously on Buffy the Vamp- er Battlestar Galactica" (gee, why is Dorrel in the POBSG? Maybe he'll be back this week?) or the blasted PREVIEWS (that I don't watch anymore). They usually edit the BBBs to mislead you as to what's happening anyway.

Well, that was pretty long winded. But Aaron Williams says it better. Jeff, this one's for you.

So say we all.

Run away! It's TAG!

A co-worker and I were just arguing whether it's more embarassing to be from Texas (him) or Massachusetts. Today I think I take the upper (lower) hand.

But neither of us is from California.

Not Addis Ababa?

C'mon, tell me you weren't thinking kryptonite.

The Monday Morning Galactica Report - The All You Need Is Love Edition

As usual, SPOILERS!

So, if they keep to their theme (as I see it so far) with a Whedonesque rigidity, this will be a harrowing season. Or at least a handful of eps.
BTW, IMHO (um, WT- er, nevermind...) my show is back. No, that's not true, MY show is still canceled, but the movie was pretty spiffy. And I can't believe he killed WASH!

*cough* BSG is back. This weeks ep had a much lighter touch and didn't hurt itself trying for the real-world parallels. Rather that go for the one to one correspondence they just told the story. And if you feel like assigning further (inappropriate, to my mind) symbolism, that's yer own lookout.

As usual, my favorite characters are the most conflicted. I'm just having a heck of a time watching the Tighs. Both of them want so much and have NO idea how to get it and manage to screw things up without trying. Dana "Three" Biers (the press are toasters! Never forget!) suddenly jumped up a bunch of notches. And we're both (SWIMW and I) holding our breath waiting to see what terrible terrible consequences come of the whole Boomer / Hera thing.

Are Boomer / Sharon ever going to meet? I mean, check it out. Boomer shoots the old man, gets killed by Cally, and along with Caprica Six "reforms" the Cylons. Meanwhile, Sharon hooks up with Helo as part of a Cylon plot, makes her way back to Galactica, has a baby, and manages to get back into the fleet! She's a Raptor pilot again! So the one Sharon has essentially taken over the other Sharon's life! The "original" Galactica Sharon (the one who shot Adama) may get to compete with Tyrol for the "Boy Does My Life Suck Beyond the Telling" award. I mean, Tyrol's looking almost content in the middle of war and occupation. And he got to show up out of NOWHERE and save his wife from a whithering hail of gunfire. He gets Husband of the Year award and then some!

(Hey, has anyone seen Hot Dog? You know, Adama's REAL son? Is he on New Cap? Still in the fleet? Did I miss that he got killed last season?)

Anyway-- The Theme. It's not Occupation. It's Love. As I see it there are at least Three characters that have done / are about to do terrible, irrevocable actions for Love and don't have a moment's regret over it. We started the season with Three asking Six if it was worth it (bringing the Cylons to New Cap) over the love of a man. And Six said if Three had ever known Love that she wouldn't have to ask that. Ellen Tigh is still a conniving backstabbing witch. But now she's conniving and backstabbing because she can't stand to lose Saul. And short of putting a round in her eye, I don't think she's going to stop anytime soon. And now Dana (Three) has got a serious Jones on. She's going to turn the worlds upside down to find that baby. Not because of any import to one side of the other, but because the Oracle prommised her Love. (Gotta love the characters that have their very own agenda completely separate from ANYBODY else. Used to be Gaius.) I'm sure Starbuck will find her way into this theme soon enough. As will Sharon. It's gonna be a scary year.

Oh, and it's nice to see that Amanda (The Oracle) Plumber is still playing crazy just fine. "Any of you ------ even MOVE and I'll execute every last one of you!"

My only disappointment so far is the lack of Baltar and Six. (Boy, I never thought I'd write THOSE words!) I mean, after the setup in Downloaded and the payoff with Lay Down Your Burdens, with the "real" Six, the one that actually had a relationship with Baltar (and has a GB living in HER head!) they haven't givin us a lot of screen time. Always leave them wanting more, I know. But give us SOME. Even Whedon gives us a few scenes of Happiness Finally Attained before he plunges both characters into a figurative or literal hell, never to be the same.

Tune in next week. Boom boom boom.

p.s. I'm not watching the previews. So there.

Crazy On Tap!

Wow. I mean: Wow.

My biggest question to these kind of folks? Why are you showing up on TV? Why are you writing books? This is revolution time, isn't it? Break out the guns, Boston Tea Party and all that? I mean, THE GOVERNMENT has just killed THOUSANDS of people. Some of which were just spirited away and executed, if they are to be believed. And you're going to fight them with public opinion? If I was the spooks that did this, I'd be sleeping soundly in my bed, because these guys can't touch me. I can rig elections, I control the media, and I can engineer wars and death within months of coming to power. And my worst foe is going to WRITE A BOOK ABOUT ME.

Orrrrrr, maybe these guys are just cranky little children who have watched too much X-Files.

HT: Koly

Anchors Aweigh!

Today is the birthday of the U.S. Navy! (Well, sorta. Seems complicated...)

What a Swell Guy

This is Alec Baldwin trying to get through the police barricades where a PLANE HAS CRASHED INTO A BUILDING. Oh, yeah, IN NEW YORK CITY.

He wouldn't have to put up with this if he'd left the country like he promised.

Happy Birthday, Bub

Good heavens. I'm only 3 months younger than Wolverine! THAT can't be right...

(And I'm still a year younger than James Bond. So I guess that's still ok.)

Babs vs. the CIA

In case you missed it (lucky you) music legend and political saint Barbra Streisand included a reportedly not-so-funny skit of her and President Bush in her latest concert tour. When she was heckled for it she responded "Shut the f--- up!" (No, not frak.)

Ok, so can we see this? Is it recorded? Can we at least hear it? (Nope, didn't search, maybe it's up on YouTube already.) The reason I'm asking is I'm curious: Which will get you in more trouble? Posting film / audio of Babs bashing on the President? Or putting classified intelligence documents in the paper? Just wondering.

Expensive Star Trek Stuff

For those of you that don't know, this past weekend Christie's Auction House auctioned off almost every scrap of Star Trek that Paramount still had in it's vaults.

Picard's Enterprise went for $500K. (Proving that we are in a world gone mad, or at least with no taste, the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture went for half of this.)

Now, you can be told the rest of the story.

BSG from NRO with a little Ff

(Still in spoiler land, gang. Avert your eyes if you're not up to date.)

Covers a lot of what I said yesterday. But he got paid for it.

"Final Cut" is the biggest reason I'm still holding my breath and thinking it will be ok. That was where the Press complained about their patriotism being questioned and I rolled my eyes and said "Oh. Well, I should have seen THIS ep coming. It was nice while it lasted." Then the Press turned out to be a fraking toaster! Whooooooo! One of my favorite moments of the whole show! Well, after finding out that Six has a Baltar in her head. How can you beat that?

As long as they never do another "Black Market" we're good.

EDIT: BTW, neither My Dad or She Who Is My Wife thought it was such a direct Iraq parallel. MD thought it was more of a WWII thing. Which might be what bugs me the most: They use Iraq words coupled with Nazi imagery. And why don't they make it a Darfur parralel?

EDIT EDIT: Ok, make sure you follow the link in the article. This one.

The BSG Premier Report

Ok, here we go. BSG 3. The gloves are off, the DVDs are ALL out, you've all had MONTHS to watch 1 and 2.0 and a few weeks to watch 2.5. Spoiler zone is in effect from here on out. You have been warned.

Yes, I liked it. There are goodly sized bits that are what I love BSG for. I'm about half-way through the podcast of Ron Moore's episode commentary. I think he wants to have his cutting social commentary and his ratings too. On the one hand he talks about how this is not Iraq specifically, but alegory on occupied societies in general, be it Poland, or Israel (Romans), or the American Colonies leading up to the Revolutionary war. All well and good and he almost got me (and kinda still does). Only then he goes on about how brave The Sci-Fi Channel is being by running this. Ummmm, how brave do you have to be to comment on the Nazi occupation of France? Unless that's not what you're commenting on.

They show that desperate people resort to desperate measures - Suicide Bombing for example. They're trying to show that everyone thinks they're the good guys. The Iraqi resistance thinks that they're the heroes freeing a repressed people. Fine. That would be interesting casting the Colonials (the Heroes) as the insurgents and the Cylons (the Bad guys) as the powerful occupying U.S. It would be REALLY interesting if they played it honest. The elements that are missing is that there is no war of public opinion in the Cylon press (and they don't make TV shows where the evil robots are now an alegory for the evils of US power). The suicide bombers are only targeting enemy leaders and military targets. They TALK about bombing The Market, but it's never done and thoroughly denounced before it ever happens. I want to see them bomb Laura's kindergarten class. Keep it real. The Colonials had a free and thriving society before the Cylons showed up. Twice. And if the Cylons leave the Colonials to their own devices they really would be alone. There would not be surrounding powers waiting for the Cylons to leave. I want to hear a Cylon (with a Boston accent) shouting "Quagmire!" Oh, and waterboarding isn't really the same as pulling out someone's EYE, is it? (Although erasing Tight's calendar seems pretty legitimate to me.)

If they could manage paralels of these elements, it could be interesting. But they can't. So we end up with Nazis (or, say, Saddam Hussein's regime). Which Moore's commentary seems to bear out. But he knows that night vision footage of people being absconded with in the middle of the night evokes Iraq in the minds of the Fever Swamp Left. And he's ok with running with that.

Remember when good guys used to say grace before dinner? Now it's shorthand for Lunatic Evil Person. Heck, in the ORIGINAL Galactica they said grace. (Ok, Shepard Book said Grace. JAYNE even said grace.)

You notice they discontinued the body count? Maybe it's because Laura's board is gone (President Baltar has a picture of himself there, remember?) but it might also be because most of the casualties so far this season are self inflicted.

The good: Starbuck getting The Village treatment from the Cylons. ("You are number Six" would send a mixed message here, wouldn't it?)

Cally seems to be in for an interesting story line.

Fat Lee.

Lots of people wound up MARRIED. Not boyfriends or girlfriends, MARRIED. (I hope this hasn't doomed Anders and Dualla as sacrafices on the altar of the Lee / Kara 'shippers.)

The Sixes and Eights are getting to do really cool things and play lots of neat character bits.

Baltar is as unpredictable and starcrossed as ever. He just can't manage to be right.

Tigh. (Sorry sweetheart, he's just fun to watch.)

The idea that Pegasus may run off in search of Earth while Galactica stays behind could be really fun.

If they can stay on mission and say "what would they REALLY do in this situation" then it'll still be a good show. If they run off the rails making a POINT, then we have a problem and we'll remember when the show was terrific.

So say we all.

The Random Thoughts Blog

It's Friday!

I haven't read any news this week. Last thing I heard was the Foley stuff and the Amish. Now I'm Current Event free. I'm more relaxed than I have been in months! I guess ignorance IS bliss!

Big Thunderstorm right now. In Phoenix that's a big deal. She Who Is My Wife is in a room full of thunder-phobic kindergartners, so good luck, honey!

Saw the latest Bond trailer. Casino Royale. I actually recognized scenes from the book! Is that allowed? (Not to worry: Lots of scenes that Ian Fleming never even dreamed of.)

Of course, the big news is GALACTICA STARTS BACK UP TONIGHT! I haven't watched the first act that Sci-Fi put up on line. I haven't even watched all the webisodes yet. Maybe we'll do that tonight. Then the two hour premier can be a THREE hour premier.

Coffeemate creamers now has rasberry-chocolate. This may be better that Galactica AND Star Trek. No, really. (Ok, just looked on the web site - both the Pumkin Spice AND Gingerbread flavors are available now. I may be drinking WAY too much coffee.)

I got Danny Elfman's first concert piece this week. Serenada Schizophrenia. Quite good. Very Elfman, sure, so you might have a couple of Beetlejuice flashbacks, but a little bigger than his latest film work. I'll put it up there with Nightmare Before Christmas. Bernard Hermann should get co-writing credit as always, but that's ok too.

Still no Scarecrow and Mrs. King on DVD. Just so's y'all know.

Keep flying!

Happiest Place on Earth

I just found out that this week's release of The Little Mermaid on DVD includes the unreleased short of The Little Match Girl.

Both are Hans Christian Andersen stories. And neither one has a happy ending. Disney's Little Mermaid? Happy ending. The Steadfast Tin Soldier? Happy ending (although that was more a dictate of the music they chose). Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame (not HCA)? BIIIG happy ending! The Little Match Girl? Heh heh heh. No such luck. It's nice to see they managed it at least once.

I look forward to seeing it.