If I Had No Other Reason to Dislike the UN...

This one would do just fine. The defence?

"We are applying a standard of morality that is very, very high but we cannot expect that soldiers when they go abroad are going to behave themselves as we think they should."

Gee, that's worked so well for United States troops.

"There are a wide range of countries being represented in the UN forces and among these there is always going to be a bad apple."

When do we get to hear Ted Kennedy or Cindy Sheehan go on a bit about the attrocities of the UN Right about the same time Sadaam starts building snowmen, I'd guess.

Chlorine in the Gene Pool

As the near year dawn we look back on the old year and reflect. Well, those of that aren't contending for the 2006 Darwin Awards, that is.

...And Love the Bomb

We watched a program on the History Channel last night about the Doomsday Clock. Perhaps I'm just ignorant of such things, but I'd never heard of this before. (I'll bet Alan Moore had though.) I objected a little that this was on the program "Modern Marvels". While it was an interesting look at nuclear brinkmanship over the last sixty years, I don't consider a think-tank of scientists arbitrarily setting a clock's hands to reflect how much of the brown stuff we're in to be a "Marvel". (I wanted to see Aircraft Carriers or Hoover Dam.)

The thing that struck me, watching this program, was what the last sixty years would have been like without The Bomb. The U.S.S.R. was ready, willing, and able to invade large swaths of the world (and was occasionally doing so). They were not so much held in check by conventional weapons. And if they had been it would have been by their use, not just by their existence (as with The Bomb). If you want to take the flip-side of "the U.S.A. is just another Empire" then fine, it kept us in place too.

Another piece of info that got skipped was while they were talking about the Genie in the Bottle. That once it was seen that such a weapon could be invented, it was only a matter of time before it was replicated. To the best of my knowledge (and from another History Channel show) the nuclear weapon has only been invented ONCE. At tremendous cost with astonishing resources. All of the other atomic nations have gotten their intel from the U.S. by various means. (But hey, espionage is no big deal and it's all a bunch of witch hunts.)

So while a nuclear exchange was (is) clearly unwinnable, it probably kept some more "winnable" propositions off the table.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I was at Blockbuster on New Year's Eve and looking at one of the racks I realized I was looking at something I never thought I'd see. A new Harrison Ford movie sitting right next to a new Steven Spielberg movie and I had no interest in seeing either of them. (Firewall and Munich.) The pain of Star Wars I-III is well known. So this news just doesn't excite me even a bitty-bit.

Happy New Year!

Hi gang! I'm back. Did anything happen while I was gone?

Where Snow Man Has Gone Before

You've done this. Admit it.

What color is the weather?

Right now it's brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgundy. I'd like to point out that it is THIRTY-FOUR DEGREES OUTSIDE. Al Gore, where are my melting polar caps?

For those of you that don't know why I'm freaking out about this? I live in PHOENIX, ARIZONA! Like Tatooine without the cool buildings!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

But is that December or March?

Well, this is an interesting article. Myself, I never worried about it all that much. I know some people hang a very big hat on the idea that Christianity "stole" Christmas. That alone makes it all... Something. (If specifically Christian imagery shows up someplace, well, that's just coincedence.) I think that after two THOUSAND years (or so) the argument gets a little tired. But this would certainly be an interesting twist. I hope my better educated readers (and siblings) would comment on what they know. Me? I'm going to enjoy the end of Advent and the beginning of Christmas.

p.s. From the comments:

"Why March 25 as the key date? Because it was the date associated with the vernal equinox (and thus with equal day and night, divine balance and all that) and the month of Nisan (and thus Pesach) in the Jewish calendar was (eventually) keyed off in relation to that. Et cet."

It's also the day that Gollum fell into the Cracks of Doom, clutching the Ring.

That Tolkien, what a rascal!

Surak - More Modeling

Looking good, if I do say. Juuuuust about ready for texturing. Thanks to the Rhino for reference.

Ocean's 13

Yeah, I know, 12 wasn't very good. But I'm a sucker for this kind of movie and I LOVED the first one. And doesn't this just look like a hoot?



EDIT: Well, it would look like a hoot if you could see it. Not everyone can be YouTube I guess... Try here.

A Christmas Carol

I've been waiting weeks to post this. Yesterday Hugh Hewitt did a segment on A Christmas Carol, it being the anniversary day of the book being published. So here we are.

As I mentioned before, Jim Hill Media is reviewing FORTY versions of A Christmas Carol ever put to film. He recommended this one most highly. And with good reason. It's produced by Chuck Jones! It looks very Victorian, very dingy and dirty. (Now that I think on it, it kind of reminds me of Jones' A Cricket in Times Square - I'll have to search for that...) And this is a GHOST story. Sure, the ghost of Christmas future is scary. That's easy. He looks like death and hangs out in graveyards and shows Scrooge his own death. It's the OTHER ghosts that are so unsettling as well! The GoC Past creeps me out. They include the GoC Presents' legs of Ignorance and Want. And Marley is very much a dead dead fellow. Great stuff. There are much longer versions of A Christmas Carol that have done far far worse.

Here are the highlights:



And here is the whole film. (Still only 30 minutes.)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Lights!

Nothing new here, but it's a Christmas fave. Well, it's a Christmas fave for ME. Scott can post Rudolph on his own blog. Wonder how cool this looked in person? Wonder how they followed it up the next year?

Surely You're Joking!

No I'm not, and don't call me Shirley! From the maker of Airplane, David Zucker! Funny? Scary? You pick.

LOTS of BSG Today on Sci-Fi

BSG is running a BSG marathon today, starting with the beginning of Season 3 and ending with Hero. It's already in progress. Sorry for the late notice.

BTW, on the podcast we find that Ron Moore is a lapsed Catholic. Well. That explains almost everything.

BSG Monday - The Eye of Jupiter - 41,402 Survivors

First off, I'm told they changed the title from the Eye of Zeus. Um, not that we haven't had a mish-mash of Roman and Greek gods before now (Mars has been mentioned) but we've already established Zeus (and where IS Tom Zerek these days?) as the top of the Colonial pantheon of gods. Just saying.

Ok, see? THIS is what BSG used to do, week in and week out. Everybody gets a hand in. Want a Tyrol story? Got it. Sharon? Two of 'em. A little "Why is Six the most sympathetic character in this ep?" Spades. Apollo and Starbuck? YIKES! Sam Anders is back and ADA (Anastasia Dualla-Adama for the latecomers) finally gets something to do! THAT'S juggling the character arcs. (How do you kill a circus? Go for the juggler.)

The "previously on Battlestar Galacticas" are ominous. Let's flash back to all the most complicated stories of the season. No EyeTigh, so that's a small relief. Starbuck and Apollo, Hera, and FINALLY last weeks ep and the current predicament. Oh, and we're back to the 2.5 trick of "Hey, here's plot that we cut from an earlier ep for a nifty character moment when our show clocked in a three hours last week. Sorry."

First we're following up from The Passage. For those that are wondering, we've been there for two weeks, so the gang is getting their vittles. This will become important later on when the fleet jumps away into unprotected and unfed space. They should be ok over the winter break.

We immediately continue along with the MUST (Massively Unresolved Sexual Tension) from Unfinished Business. We find out very quickly that 1) just 'cause we're in space doesn't mean we don't have messed up Catholic girls 2) there's only so much guilt even Lee Adama can take and of course 3) they're not fooling anyone. I DID watch Spoilervision (Next Week on BSG) and while it was brief, it seems to imply that ADA will get more screen time. Good for her.

Anders gets to not only be nine feet taller than Lee, but he's all ripped and greasy and looks like an extra from a razor commercial or some such. And he gets to be right. I hate it when that happens. Lee's look when Anders tells him that not only is Kara fooling around on Anders, she's fooling around on Lee too is the second best in the ep. She's Hellen Tigh without the charm or the moral compass! (This is where we find out if She Who Is My Wife is reading.)

Tyrol has spider-sense! Ok, I was expecting him to be super-mechanic and follow the pinging of a micrometricly out-of-phase fribonic Cylon thingy and find the big bad. But it turns out that he's still working out parent issues. I would love it if Tyrol became a priest. I miss the spirituality that the early shows had. You had some true-blue believers like the priests and Six, some in the closet yet fiercely religious folk like Kara, and you had the balance with Wild Bill and Gaius "I Am God" Baltar. I think that adding Cavil into the mix is terrific (especially when he plays off of Six and Leoben) but they need to bring up the other end. It was a nice touch seeing both Tyrol and Kara struggling with their upbringing. And of course I loved Cally telling him that this side of him wasn't so bad. All this AND heaping helpings of plot. This is BSG on all cylinders.

Felix (SEE? EVERYBODY gets something to do this episode. Except the Nuggets - they had their ep last time and look what happened.) gets to tell us that the world is about to end and that "Hey, I don't believe ANY of this, but it makes you think, eh?" (Yeah, I know, EyeTigh is the Canadian.)

It amuses me to no end that people can still think Wild Bill is bluffing. Especially when it comes to protecting The Fleet. When he orders the nukes deployed EyeTigh gives him this great look that says "I've never loved you more." Laura tries to play the "Aren't you the guy that will throw away the whole of humanity for your kids?" card. Doesn't work. Lee and Kara? You need to be friendlier to the old man.

I slipped up. I had no idea that Wild Bill didn't know about Hera. I have been laboring under the assumption that it was really really going to hit the fan when Athena found out that Adama had kept Hera from them. For some reason I wouldn't have been nearly as worried that just Laura had lied to them. I mean, still hugely dramatic arc, but I didn't see any way back from my imagined Athena/Helo/Adama fallout. (LOOK at all the balls in the air this ep!) I still like Helo, I just don't care what he says anymore.

The Gaius Baltar show - Oh, this is a messed up little man. When he radios over the the fleet is a truly terrific moment for everyone. They'll take Boomer back and giver her her own hangar bay to play with before they even give a kindly LOOK to Dr. Baltar. These are the looks that beat out Lee finding out about Kara's extra-extra-curricular activities.

Six - I've come to the conclusion that nobody but nobody looks hurt the way Tricia Helfer does. I've said before, she may have been cast because she's a supermodel, but this gal can act. "Here, play the same character nine different ways. Most of them look and dress exactly the same. And we need to be able to distinguish them all. Good luck." Nice to see GB still has a Six in his head. I want to see what the GB in Six's Head is saying about all of this. I won't be at all surprised if at the very very end of it all, Six is the hero. Or she has a tragic ghastly end. Either way. (It's not a Joss show. It's not a Joss show. It's not a Joss show.)

Cavil. I can't think of the last character that I loved to hate this much. That's a tough trick. You either actually love the character or you hate them so much you don't want to see them. I really love to hate Cavil. I think the other Cylons feel the same way.

Leoben is now officially the Cylon equivalent of Dualla.

Caught a picture of Xena: Warrior Princess this weekend and thought "Hey! It's New York Times reporter D'Anna Biers!" I'm sure it's not supposed to work like that. Her arc continues to be interesting. I think the difference between Six and Three is three- er, is that Six really knows who GB is (better than he does) and (for WHATEVER reason) loves him anyway, really unconditionally. Three THINKS she knows who he is. I really don't think Three totally GETS GB. It's like in the gazillion monster movies where the scientists try to harness or control whatever unharnessable or uncontrollable thing - Six is the one standing by saying "You're meddling with forces you can't possibly understand." And Six is ok with that. There will come a moment (soon, I'd expect) where Three will be confronted with the awesome purity that is Gaius Baltar's ability to make the WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG choices.

According to Jane "The Passage" Espenson, there is a writer who can just rattle of pages and pages of Hybrid dialogue. Everyone has a skill.

Ok, I know it's only the mid-season break, but I'm sick sick sick sick of the now mandatory cliff-hangar. It comes to the point where when you know it's a break of some kind, you can just see the dominoes being lined up for the big "ARRRRRRRGH!" moment. Cliff-hangars are easy. They really are. Resolving them satisfactorily is not. And writing a satisfying END to something is the hardest thing to do. Which is why it's not done much. We're going to come back next season. Write us a tiny bit of closure and then pick up again next year. You know, last week would have been a good closer.

I wouldn't mind if next season was the last. Maybe season 5. I desperately want this show to have an END. And yes, I want the colonials to find Earth. Maybe that's not the End. Maybe that's the beginning of the last act. Whatever. (My guess is that the Fighting Agathons will be the only ones of the Gang that live to set foot on Earth.) Just don't rattle away on us, Ron.

Ron Moore still hasn't done his podcast this week. No scotch for you, producer man!

Ah well, see you January 21st, when Sci-Fi fraks up my whole BSG viewing routine and moves to Sunday nights.

Pulp Fiction

Interesting movie news the last couple of days. First of is the news that Sam "Evil Dead / Spider-Man" Raimi (let's not forget he was the producer behind Xena) is going to be making a new Shadow movie. I think the 1994 Shadow with Alex "Why Are You STILL in the Country" Baldwin is a great "almost" movie. It was like a genuine Shadow movie was being made and then some fool started watching Burton's Batman too much. I also recently read that Raimi almost got to do it back then, but was passed over. So he went and made Darkman. Ahhh a terrible price is sometimes paid.

Now today I read that Guillermo "Hellboy" Del Toro is looking to make Tarzan. I liked Hellboy a lot. I think it skipped a bit in the last act and I always felt it was a little incomplete. But I can come up with worse folks to do Edgar Rice Burrows. Wonder if it will come out at the same time as the perpetualy "Coming Soon" John Carter of Mars?

And now on the opposite side of the pulps, CLASSIC HEROIC LITERATURE. Robert "Back to the Future / Forrest Gump / Contact" Zemeckis is making BEOWULF. This is the stuff that kept J.R.R. Tolkien writing into the wee hours of the dawn. One of Tolkien's earliest works was an english translation. I'm not always crazy about Zemeckis, but you have to admit he pretty much always gets the movie he's going for. I love it when a director gets the clout to make anything he wants and then does.

A New Tim Minear Show Awaiting Cancelation

No, seriously, maybe it WON'T be canceled. Really.

(Tim was the OTHER creator of Firefly and Angel. He's the Republican / Libertarian one.)

"DRIVE is an action-fueled drama following a diverse group of Americans driving for their lives (or the lives of their loved ones) in a sinister, cross-country road race. Some of them have been coerced into joining The Race; others have sought out The Race themselves, hearing rumors of the $32-million prize. Each has a reason to compete. And each must win."

Well, here's the new reason this has just become Must See TV for me: It's rumored that Nathan "Captain Mal" Fillion may pick up the lead.

Go Vote For Lileks

Not sure if you still can, but go here: http://2006.weblogawards.org/2006/12/best_individual_blog.php

Peter Boyle 1935-2006

Sad news.

Worried about Hugh 2

As mentioned previously, Hugh Hewitt mentioned that when asked to recommend three movies to explain America to foreigners he suggested Cool Hand Luke, Caddyshack, and Hoosiers.

I've been asked what MY three would be. It's interesting. I have to admit, I tend to come up with WAR movies. Or EXPLORER movies. HEROIC Americans doing AMAZING things with DEATH and DANGER and DERRING-DO. We tend to pick movies that show our best and our worst. Face it, Taxi Driver is not a bad contender. It's hard to come up with a better representative for The Worst. Scarface? (The original OR the remake.) Bonnie and Clyde? I'm sure someone will cry out some poverty infested Chaplin flick or The Grapes of Wrath or some such.

I confess, I haven't seen enough OLD war movies (the movies, not the wars) so Saving Private Ryan would be high on my list. (No, Kelly's Heroes is not my representative American movie. Great flick. Sorry for the negative waves, Moriarty.) Apollo 13 is way up there. I'm a big 'ol movie snob so I want older flicks as well. (Pre-1970's is old, thanks.) Even here, what makes them American? The fact that we can spend that much money on such lofty endeavors? (Going to the Moon, saving the world.) That we are willing to? (Were willing to...)

Comedies - I would think that these would be the definitive American movies. I'm sure the world over we're more represented by Sylvester Stalone than Bill Murray (who is Canadian). Here's where folk get into fist fights. Do you pick something like American Graffiti which tries to show what we like about the U.S., or do you go for Cadyshack or Ghostbusters which has glorious fun with our warts? It's a Wonderful Life (you had to see that coming) or Animal House? Woody Allen makes the definitive NEW YORK movies, sure.

Good grief, this is a tall order. I would think these three movies would have to show what makes us do things. What stops us from doing things. What we want. What makes us laugh. What scares us. Where we've been. Where we're going. (This is why I'm leery of Westerns - Huge part of the American character but they're either mostly candy-coated or they get into Dances with Don't We Just Suck).

My Humble List

• Superman (1978) - Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Real live New York City. This is what we want to be really badly. Four years after Vietnam and Watergate, Hollywood could still occasionally make movies like this without winking and giggling too much.
  
  
• It's a Wonderful Life (1946) - Even if there weren't small towns like this (and from what I've heard from my parents and grandparents, there were) there ought to be. What gets missed in the "God Bless Us Every One" ending is that George Bailey is a pretty miserable fellow who keeps doing the nice things in SPITE of what it gets him. That's American right there, that is.
  
  
• Casablanca (1942) - "The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative." - Winston Churchill. That is Rick Blaine. He lies, he cheats, he steals, he kills, he wins, and in spite of himself winds up the hero. What's more American than that? It's also filled almost entirely with a real cast hiding in America as the last safe bastion of freedom (well, with a film industry). Remember that during the scene where everyone shouts down the Nazis by singing Marseillaise.
  

There you go. It's not much, but it's mine. I'm sure I missed some dooseys.

Never Happened?

You do know that Iran is hosting a conference that is questioning / denying the Holocaust? It's a MYTH says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This is still ILLEGAL in Germany, by the way. And a whole COUNTRY (that is pursuing nuclear weapons) has set this up. I just checked CNN and FoxNews. Nothing. New York Times (by your command) has nothing today. Mel Gibson, well known hater of and danger to Jews (*cough*), lots on him. Nothing on Iran.

It's not breaking news TODAY maybe? The conference started a couple of days ago. Maybe that's why? Apocalypto opened Friday, so what? How long did the stories about the CARTOONS about Mohamed run? BEFORE people started to be killed for them? (Would that be disproportionate response?)

Why is this not news? I mean TOP news?

We will never forget. We just sometimes won't care.

Problems posting?

Is anyone having difficulty posting comments? Viewing the blog at all? Anyone? Anyone? (Do you realize that Beuller... Beuller... is twenty years old?)

Just So You Know

A marathon of BSG Season 3 episodes (Occupation through Hero) will air on Tuesday, December 19th starting at 8AM/7C on the SciFi Channel.

So this week you stragglers can go watch the DVDs, then watch the marathon, and get the three missing eps off of iTunes. All set!

Six Word Stories

This is old, but I never published it. Alan Moore, still a genius.

Worried about Hugh

Hugh Hewitt just mentioned (well, Friday he did - podcast) that when asked to recommend three movies to explain America to foreigners he suggested Cool Hand Luke, Caddyshack, and Hoosiers. I've never seen Cool Hand Luke, but I know that what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Non-Spoiler BSG - Lyrics and Interview

Taken from The Battlestar Galactica Wiki: The lyrics and translation of the BSG opening titles:

Lyrics (Sanskrit):	English translation:
Aum bhoor bhuwah swaha Tat savitur varenyam Bhargo devasaya dheemahi Dhiyo yo naha prachodayat	Oh God! Thou art the Giver of Life, Remover of pain and sorrow, The Bestower of happiness, Oh! Creator of the Universe, May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light, May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction.

Also for fun: Harlan "Angriest Man in This or Any Other Universe" Ellison interviews Ron Moore.

BSG Monday - The Passage

HooooooooYEAH! THIS is why we watch BSG. Allright, it's why I watch BSG. I had high hopes for this one, being written by a talented and prolific Buffy and Angel writer, Jane Espenson. (She'll be doing another one on the back half of the season.) This episode was harrowing from almost the first minute. The episode it will be compared to will be "33", I'm sure. They have the same sort of "fleet's in trouble" self-contained structure.

EyeTigh is back in the CiC. And he even gets a mostly warm welcome. (Mostly. More on Felix and ADA in a moment.) I'm getting to where I can watch an episode and spot the scenes that went un-cut (usually really great, textured, character scenes) that caused some huge chunk of PLOT to wind up on the cutting room floor. Coming soon to "Previously on Battlestar Galactica". Well, that's one way to do it. This week it was "Paper shortage." Boy it's good to see EyeTigh and Wild Bill getting along again. Not saying ET isn't still crazy and I'm sure he'll continue to be out-scary anyone in the fleet.

Kara gets more great scenes. Lee mostly doesn't (ok, he had good stuff with the pilots). Is she really THAT much more fun to write? I know, it's a Kat-centric ep, so that automatically brings Starbuckbuckbuck into the mix.

I hope they do something cool with Felix again soon. They seem to be setting him up for it. ADA hasn't had more than exposition this whole season! Can we have a little bit of fallout from Unfinished Business please? Unfinished Unfinished Business?

But enough about the Gang. This was first and foremost the Nuggets' episode. It's been a long run from "Act of Contrition". And this show has done a terrific job of filling up the corners with this crowd. You see them here and there and you tend to remember who they are. It's fun to go back to the early episodes and see the first time you knew who Deckhand #4 was before his tragic death on Kobol. I remember coming back to the Fleet in Occupation and seeing the Nuggets running the show. It was the first really hopefull moment of the episode. And Kat got to be CAG.

Kat. She shaped up to be a really nice foil for Starbuck. (Starbuck's goodbye was perfect. Nice to see that the writers still don't pull punches with Kara. She's an awful person with a heart of gold.) I could have done without the "Secret From Her Past That She Just Can't Live With" cliche - it pretty well marked Kat for Death the moment it came up. She had enough history that they didn't need to make up more. I could have seen her making the same decisions without it. Heck, her "ashamed" speech from Final Cut was enough to motivate this episode.

As awful as it was watching Kat get put through her paces the moments I remember even better from this episode were with Hotdog. That's right, the real life Lee Adama (Edward James Olmos' son). Whereas by the time she died (and it was a fantastic death) you saw Kat's demise coming from a battlestar away, I really didn't know what was going to happen to Hotdog. (Someone is transcribing the flight roster we saw with all the pilots' real names even as we speak, I'm sure. I think HD's last name is Costanza.) Every time they made a run you just KNEW something awful was going to happen and they nailed you to the wall with it every time. Somehow they managed to really communicate what was on the line with this episode. It never felt "safe". Might as well have put "Written and Directed by Joss Whedon" in front of it.

BTW, Ron Moore talks about radiation sickness being Helo's Big Fear after three months on Cylon Occupied Caprica. I didn't really get that from the ep. Nice idea though.

Well, see you next week with The Eye of Jupiter - the mid season finale. Gut-wrenching cliff-hanger to follow, no doubt. Then we come back on January 21 for the new Sunday Night Galactica. Boom boom boom.

Firefly: Don't you just miss it?

I put this together a few years ago. Now through the wonderment of YouTube I can share it with the wide wide world without incurring inordinate bandwidth costs! Shiny!



Maybe someday I'll do the "Serenity" edition. I am a leaf and all that. Definitely the bug that day.

Take that Jack Bauer

For the last few months I've been seeing the signature line

"Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas."

Heh. Very cute. This morning I saw

"Jack Bauer wears Bill Adama pajamas."

So say we all.

p.s. I'll write up Jane "Apartment" Espenson's BSG on Monday. Firmly in my top five episodes. Maybe my favorite. After next week I'll do my "Story So Far" ranking.

An Old Hope

Here's something: Bob Hope used to be funny!



Not to worry, he used to pick on Republicans too. Usually when something unstoppable and vicious couldn't be killed. "It's like a Republican!" Equal time. Those were the days.

Not Just For BSG Anymore

Why doesn't anyone say "Felgercarb"? I gather there was a recent ep of Veronica Mars where the characters started using "Frack". (Aside from being Joe Sweedon's favorite show, enough that he even did a guest appearance, that may get me to watch the show right there.) I guess none of the gorram Firefly curses caught on. Except in China of course.

TMP Shuttle Progress

Some further work on the Surak (or the T'Mas as I'll most likely name it). Shuttle is done (I may go back and redo some of the underside before texturing) so I'm now finishing the sled itself. All textures are temporary.

We'll Miss You John

Ahhhh, THERE'S the unbiased jounralism I know and love from the Cylons.

"During Bolton's 16 months at the U.N., the fine points of diplomacy took a back seat to his aggressive pursuit of President Bush's global agenda, which ranged from pressing for sanctions against North Korea and Iran to installing U.N. peacekeepers in conflict-wracked Darfur to overhauling the 61-year-old United Nations to meet 21st century challenges."

No editorializing there.

How is establishing sanctions and then not enforcing them diplomacy (Mr. Carter)? How is a U.N. force in Darfur BUSH'S global agenda? Besides, isn't that what the U.N. is FOR? Blah blah not the world's police blah blah multi-lateral approach, blah blah BLAH BLAH #*&@ING BLAH!

(Listening to Chess while writing about the U.N. is a recipie for cardiac arrest, let me tell you.)

Scary Mary

And in today's "That's not RIGHT" category:



Hide your children. Heh.

It's That Day

Can you imagine living in a country like England? Italy? (Wait, let me check my blog stats. Ok, you, you on the Isle of Man looking for "Jamie Bamber", you don't have to imagine.) My point, such as it is, is that we have almost 225 years of History as a nation, 500 some years (from a European perspective, yes, yes, Lief Erickson, Native Americans, whatnot) to remember. As opposed to having history back to the DAWN of HISTORY or the like. So we don't have to remember much, as compared to the above. Our geography is tougher, sure. That's why we don't know where anything ELSE is in the world. Until there is weapons fire exchanged, then we find out where it is. (I had no idea that Israel was completely surrounded by folk that hate it. After this summer, now I do.)

Anyway, history. American history has some wild stuff in it. (Andrew "Twenty Dollar Bill" Jackson being violently opposed to paper money is a funny bit.) When I was a kid, we learned Columbus, Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, hurry through WWII the school year is almost out, annnnnnd, sorry, time to go home and spend the next four months inside or at the swimming pool. See you next year. I have a basic criteria for minimum knowledge of American history: July 4th, 1776. This is the only DATE I REQUIRE. Know when it is, know what it is, buncha guys in wigs writing on parchment. Bonus points for John Hancock.

I would ask that you know The Civil War is mid 1800s. I have a tough time with the date m'self. You can cheat, sure. Remember that the war started RIGHT after Lincoln's election (I insist you associate the civil was with Lincoln - maybe Gone With the Wind) and so therefore the year must be divisible by four, plus one. Or you can reverse engineer "Four score and seven years".

Know WWII was mid Twentieth Century. Japan, Germany. And here's the other date that while I don't think you HAVE to know, it might be good if it creates a small but distinct tingle when you hear it. If "a day that shall live in infamy" means Ben Afleck to you, then that's just the world we live in. But at least at that point you realize that there are ships involved and people not watching much television.

December 7th, 1941. (Variations of "FDR lied, people died" is a curiously consistent refrain when I google it.)

Here's an interesting article on the Greatest Generation that participated on that day. It's amazing to think that it wasn't' THAT long ago that there were American Civil War vets walking about (mid Nineteenth Century, see above). That people who grew up without radios or telephones or cars (due to technological unavailability, not economic unatainability) one day saw a fella from Dayton walk on an extra-terrestrial rock. (July 20th, 1969 is another big one with me, but it's totally optional.)

So, to recap: Jul 4 1776, mid 1800s, Lincoln, mid 1900s, Germany, Japan. (I'll add Sep 11 2001 when I'm older.)

Happy Birthday Jeff!

Less Trot from the Fox

Well this is kind of sad news. Not dead guy sad news, but still... I wish I were in a position to decide to only work once a week.

Help! It's a big guy in a fake beard!

My wonderful sis in law (no, the other one) sent me this. This time next year she'll be a mom. Nice to know she's doing the prep work.

Klaatu Barada Nikto - The Musical Edition

I'm listening to the score to The Day the Earth Stood Still, by Bernard "Psycho / North by Northwest / Citizen Kane" Herrmann. ("Who is this Bernard Herrmann, and why do we have to keep hearing about how great he is?"). The film was directed by Robert "Sound of Music / West Side Story / Star Trek: The Motion Picture" Wise.

The score uses two theremins. This is the quintesential Sci-Fi instrument. It goes weeeeeeOOOOOOOOOooooooooooOHHHHHHHHHH. It's actually a very pretty sounding instrument, when it's not be played to be W-eee-eeee-iiiiiii-rrrrrr-dddddd! (Boowhaaaahahahahahahahhahaha!)

I remember being at Bob's house with all our movie geek buddies. Bob's Dad had a movie scene (Spellbound) with an "unusual instrument that you miiiiight not recognize" he said with a twinkle. It played about half a second before most of us chimed in (in harmony) "Theremin!" Wrong crowd, sir. Heh.

Happy Birthday Walt!

Walt Disney. Love him or hate him, he still makes George Lucas look like a poser.

Hanging Out with the BSG Folks and misc BSG babble

Not only am I blogging about BSG, now I'm blogging about the BSG podcasts. I listened to the "Round Table" BSG podcast. It's like three hours long! (That's a LOT of scotch.) They recorded it at Ron Moore's apartment in Vancouver with Mrs. Ron, Helo, Lee, Baltar, and - BADGER (Firefly, go watch it)! First off, it's James Callis, Jamie "I'm Not Really American" Bamber, and Mark "Badger" Shepard - all Brits. Jamie Bamber sounds exactly like Callis with a higher voice. At one point they're all three talking. It's like the Geico Lizard family reunion. Seriously.

Arrrgh - it's a little bit spoilery. The spoilery bits are funny (you can make some leaps of logic - they involve Badger's character), because Mrs. Ron doesn't know anymore than we do and she starts getting testy. It's also fun to hear "the gang" wandering in and out of the kitchen, finding out they're out of ice, etc. It's nerdy fun to be sure. They keep the tape running when Penikett gets his keys, says he's been drinking water the last hour, he and Ron talk about the next time he's on set, and all the "I'm about to leave" babbling that people do.

They talk about the scene where Laura finds out about her cancer and all of the Caprica ships flying over. I keep waiting for Shepard to mention that Serenity flew over in that scene. The Firefly cameo!

Jamie Lee (might use that rather than NFL) is somewhat dismissive of the idea of "genocide" (no genes) regarding Cylons. Penikett says "This is the point when Jamie has had enough scotch that he actually BECOMES Apollo."

Sounds like Badger's a fan. I mean, knows the show backwards and forwards. Cool.

"Downloaded" is now forever "Cylons in Coffee Shops" (Jamie Bamber).

The cast is all still firmly in love with "33". Can't blame them.

They actually explain why Six doesn't have a name. Baltar never bothered to find out. Ever. It became a game for Baltar to see how long he could NOT know her name. Perfect. For GB that's just perfect.

When asked what other character they might want to play, almost everyone says "Baltar". Except James Callis, who wants to play Six. So he can have scenes with Baltar. Bwahahahaha!

Anyway, it's a good rambling romp and worth listening to while you do something else. I mean, don't just sit and listen to a podcast for three hours, you could be watching Angel or something!

Speaking of podcasts, this is an interesting article. I never listened to all of this podcast. Now I'll have to go back.

On teh internets, apparently "Unfinished Business" is becoming the hotly contested ep. I loved it. Lots. Like, Final Cut loved. Maybe not Scar loved. I can't tell if Mrs. Ron hated it or not. Her post may have been sarcastic. She did mention that she now hates Starbuck. But that's part of the fun. At National Review Podhoretz loved it. (Gotta be careful, the last time I posted a link to an NRO BSG article I started a fight in another state.) I just love seeing National Review posts pop up at TrekBBS or Whedonesque. Whedon and Trek fans are not the most conservative groups out there. Mrs. Ron reads NRO. I gather Mr. Ron does not. Heh. This is now officially a Love it or Hate it ep. I wonder if "Pegasus" falls into this cat? I loved it. SWIMW hated it. I mean, lots. But she loved "UB", so there we are.

Monday BSG - An Episode About Boxey!?

Oh, BOXING! Well, wasn't that fun? All the heartbreak you could possibly want served up a in bite-sized 40 minute chunk. Starbuck is evil. We know that now. And Apollo is just bad choices on legs. Poor ADA (Anastasia Duala-Apollo, keep up). (Oh, wait, I'm still mad at her for the whole Billy thing. Way to go, Lee! I think the only one I'm cutting any slack anymore is EyeTigh!) Listen to the podcast this week, it's a hoot. It's Ron Moore, Mrs. Ron, Grace "Rhino Thinks Sharon is Hot" Park, and Tahmoh "I Can't Pronounce Your Name But You're Helo" Penikett. Some fun stories like the fact that Penikett is a big boxing fan, been boxing since high school or something, and the original draft had Apollo cleaning the mat with him. Actually, the ORIGINAL draft didn't have him at all. THEN he got to be mat cleaner. Then he said to Moore "Have you seen me? I'm Helo!" Heh.

You know, for a really terrific episode, I don't have THAT much to write about it (comparatively). Great performances all round. Michael "EyeTigh" Hogan continues to just seethe with every frame he's in. I'm looking forward to the DVD's deleted scenes. Apparently they knew that they wanted to flash back to the "One Year Later" missing year, and they had to use the New Caprica sets while they could, months before they'd shoot the rest of the episode, so as usual they shot more than they could use. One of the things they shot was how EyesTigh and Starbuck got to be buddies. I was more interested in seeing that than the Lee / Kara thing (which I was plenty interested in, sure). I mean, just from their last scenes together in Lay Down Your Burdens (the laugh riot showdown with her, Lee, and Anders) you got a good idea of the rift. I didn't think the specifics were necessary. Oh, except the specifics were more heart-rending than I could have thought possible, so ok. Anyway, they filmed the Tigh / Kara stuff (don't get any ideas you slash nutjobs you) but had to cut it for time. (They really should just start making two-hour episodes.) DVD, here we come!

"The Fighting Agathons" is one of my favorite lines, so when you read TFA, that's who I'm talking about. Kind of like NFL (Non-Fat Lee.)

The best part of the ep was when Wild Bill shut down the Dance and left us all thinking "That's it? What about the Main Event?" THEN we got Kara and Lee. And they were just so very very FURIOUS. I mean, EyeTigh even took a step back. Wow.

Well, next week is Jane "Apartment" Espenson, who was mortified at having to follow this episode. "I'm like the act following The Beatles!" said Jane "I AM the Nerd Trio" Espenson. Sometimes you have to roll the hard six.

p.s. "Hero" made such a non-impression on me that I totally spaced that Three (the press is Evil) had a toaster shoot her in the head so she would resurect and she wound up back at the Opera on Kobol (possibly seeing the other five Cylons)! (Why don't the Cylons settle there instead of Earth? Surely THEY don't care that Kobol is infested with Cylons? They're like the little brother that only wants something because YOU want it. So I've heard...)

Good grief, you'd think they were Nikes!

Playstation 3 - Game Box of DEATH! Playing the games doesn't lead to violence, just HAVING the games leads to violence.

Simon Says

Hello, my name is Bill and I'll be serving your evil today. A subpage of THIS. Yeah, there goes your day.

Album Covers and iPod Advances

The newer iPods (of which one I own) display a little thumbnail of the album art, if it's available. Every once and a while I'll take a random sampling of my music and add the appropriate artwork to the collection. Cool. Very 21st century. It almost makes you not miss flying cars so much. (Nobody wants everyone to have flying cars. They just want flying cars for their own selves, soaring above the unwashed teaming masses. Just saying.)

I've discovered a dark side to the technology: Random play is no longer as fun if I'm looking anywhere near at the iPod. I used to be able (BSG, season one, Kobol's Last Gleaming: The Shape of Things to Come) (sorry, that was what randomed while I was typing this) (oh, and I got it wrong, it's Passacaglia - same ep, same theme, it's when Six and Baltar see the baby crib) to play iPod-name-that-tune. Yes, I know there is an actual name-that-tune game on the iPod - not the same thing. Anyway, if I'm looking at the iPod and no art comes up I can handily ignore the text and say "Zanzibar, Billy Joel, 52nd Street!" and feel all knowlegey (about my own music, but hey, I have 9,218 songs on my iPod). Now I look over and see a big bright album cover! Harder to ignore, easier to see. But I've discovered (Ah! The video game of Tomorrow Never Dies! No idea the track title) that a good way to get around this is to blog. Figured I'd share.

Speaking of iPods (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - ah this is a good one, it's Zaphod and Marvin and the Tank) today's PvP is hilarious. ("What a depressingly stupid machine!")

Composer Shirley Walker 1945-2006

Well, this sucks. Shirley Walker has passed away.

Here is my favorite Walker story:

For those who want the "Latin" lyrics used in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, there is an amusing and fascinating anecdote. Shirley Walker tells the story.

"As you know, the music team is rushing to the finish line as a film is in its final dub phase. Even the known orchestrators are not always given the credit they so justly deserve for insuring the timely execution (so to speak) of the score. I've become tired of fighting for credits for the support team that helps pull me through the final throes of recording and mixing my scores.

The choir for Masks gave me the opportunity to rectify this terrible situation. I made a chart by number of syllables of every music persons name backwards to use in creating the language you hear. 'Oh Nahlim Mot!', the phrase the score begins with, is Tom Milano, the music editor of most of my features, whom I originally worked with doing the Flash TV series.

You get the idea. It was working so well, I realized that I would need to include some of the film producers and executives at Warner Bros. After all, they were paying for my little inside joke. People do like to be included in these sorts of things. I had to lie to the Warner Bros. legal department person who called to ask me what the language was and what was being said.
They certainly didn't want to be a party to me saying "screw Warner Bros." in Danish. I told them it was an obscure nonsensical choral language that existed only in out of print orchestration books.

I think I actually spent more time on my plot than I did on the score during the week I was preparing the choral cues. It was quite fun to see the looks on peoples faces, as they realized what they were hearing. Only two people had deciphered the puzzle by the time we recorded the choir. It was very difficult for the singers to sing the strange words. I'm sure they would
have had more fun doing it, had I been able to include them in the joke too.

While I was mixing the score, I had Bobby Fernandez (Zed-nahn-fur E-Bob) record the choir accappella onto a seperate DAT, ostensibly for my sample reel. The look on Tom's face as he began to suspect what I had done was well worth the whole deception. He finally turned to me and said "You didn't do what I think you've done, did you?".

The rest is history. Everyone on the music team has a tape of the singing of their names (we transfered to 1/4" tape and played it backwards; the old "back-masking" trick)."

Badger Badger Badger Badger

Ok, no, not that one. This one. Everybody's favorite crime boss from Firefly. He'll be seen soon in that OTHER shaky-cam Sci-Fi Extravaganza, the one with the Rag Tag Fleet on a lonely quest—for a shining planet known as Earth. Wonder if it'll be one that Jane Espenson writes? (No, I'm not going to look for it, there be spoilers!)

Turns out his dad is this fellow here, last seen in The Prestige, previously seen in Star Trek VI and an episode of TNG, as well as Max Headroom.

You Know My Name

Wow. Just so you know, I keep a "temp" file of random text that I jot on when I get a free moment. That way when the moment comes to press "SEND" I have an appreciable amount of pointless blather to keep the blog rolling. Some days more than others.

Well, I have about a page and a half of not quite coherent and unpublishable (even for TGP) rambling about Casino Royale. It comes down to this: There are topics on which I know too much. Investment planning is not one of them. Nor is carpentry or car care. Star Trek is. Firefly is. James Bond definitely is. So I'm going to try and get this down in a few paragraphs without detailing the history of the evolution of the gun barrel titles, the John Barry / Monty Norman dispute, why Timothy Dalton was almost a great Bond, and why George Lazenby sitting next to a skating rink is the greatest scene in the history of the series, and in how many films he does not say "Bond, James Bond". But if you're that foolish, you can ask me.

I liked it much. As I think back on the film, there is a certain sparkle that still seems to be missing that I think Pierce Brosnan brought to the role even through three very uneven movies. But barring that, the film is brave enough to jettison (mostly) the CG effects, the too much is too much gadgetry, and many of the staples of the last twenty James Bond films. You know it right away when they don't start with the James Bond theme and the gun barrel (no, it's not a camera lens). You see people in the cinema looking around at each other whispering "Is this the movie? Didn't we go to see James Bond?" This is the first EON produced Bond movie that doesn't start with it.

Craig isn't exactly Ian Fleming's James Bond but he's really close. This Bond isn't perfect at everything, only a few things. He can be out-run and out-fought, but he can't be out-shot or out-schemed. His skill is getting a situation to play to his skills. He's in a little over his head for much of the film and it works terrifically. I hope they can keep to this style for a few more movies. And guys? Bring Martin Campbell back again, please. He made Goldeneye, he made this. He's your guy. If you make movies that are distinguishable from one another you don't have to change directors every time.

The story runs pretty close to book while filling in the blanks (that weren't necessary during the cold war - Russians, spies, money - got it) at the beginning of the movie. Now that I think on it, the story manages to make "terrorism" the bad guys, without ever showing anyone who looked like a modern terrorist (although they do reference 9/11 explicitly). Of course, as much as everyone thinks of James Bond as cold-warrior extraordinaire, the Soviets weren't the actual bad guys until For Your Eyes Only, in NINETEEN EIGHTY! While the plot in From Russia With Love the novel directly involved the Russians (as did Casino Royale, for that matter) the movie made them the dupes, along with the Brits, of SPECTRE. So, same trick, different bad guys. They manage to keep the three or four most memorable moments from the book. Including the ending, which is very downbeat. (Not On Her Majesty's Secret Service downbeat, but close.)

Judi Dench is still terrific. M (Barbara Mawdsley is her real name, btw) has a choice line about fighting the war in the press. And she still has no compunction about sending a double-oh out to die. But while Brosnan was playing the MI6 golden boy who Dench's M had inherited (much to her dismay), Craig is the new kid on the block who M is trying to groom into something more than a thug. It's an interesting relationship.

The bad guy: They've pulled off having the disfigured crazy Bond villain and having him be a real person. At this stage he seems an honest match for Bond in much the same way that Goldfinger or Blofeld or Largo were. No henchmen as such. There's no Oddjob or Jaws. He has a terrific line where he is bleeding from his tear ducts and assures the man playing cards with him that it is "nothing sinister".

So it's a nice new start for the Bond series. Like Batman Begins, it's a good film but I'm more interested to see what they do next with it.

Whew. That wasn't' so bad after all. Be seeing you.

Finding a Needle in a Haystack Would Be Child's Play

Gadzooks! I just found out that the shuttlecraft Galileo is at CAK (Canton / Akron airport) being restored (again)! The poor girl has had a rough life.

- The shuttle was purchased for $3,000 by a Lynne Miller and she had a special trailer built to haul it. It was brought to the Akron airdock at first and later housed in a hangar in the Akron Canton airport.

- Extensive work needed to be done on the shuttecraft, it is not clear if it was ever finished. It was expensive and time consuming. Time was spent fundraising and restoring.

- The current owner of the Galileo has asked to remain private for the time being.

- As of December 2005, Galileo is 'docked' in Ohio, in safe hands, and almost fully restored.

What a Dick Cheney

I just heard that in a year when the Cheney's made eight million dollars, they gave away six to charity. (Can someone back this up?) Truly he is the ultimate evil.

New Voyages: To Serve All of My Days - Review

No BSG this week, and I can't get my Bond review to make sense, so here we are. I watched the newest episode of New Voyages last night. For those of you that haven't followed, New Voyages is a fan production of Star Trek. They say that they are making Trek's "fourth season". This is their third episode. And they are swinging for the back fence with this one. Having D.C. Fontana as a writer doesn't hurt.

The first two eps were not good. The first I couldn't even get through, the second was cobbled together fanboy junk. "So, DUDE! What if the DOOMSDAY MACHINE could TIME TRAVEL, and it goes back and BLOWS UP the ENTERPRISE when PIKE was captain, so they have to back the GUARDIAN OF FOREVER, and they met MATT DECKER in the TWENTIETH CENTURY and then you have Kirk AND Pike and then the MOVIE ENTERPRISE shows up?! Whooooooaaaaah!" I didn't make any of that up.

So this past week they put out their latest. Guest starring Walter "Chekov" Koenig. I gotta say, I enjoyed it tremendously. I may watch it again. I think Exeter (another, and until now, better fan production) probably re-captures the overall look of the original show a little more faithfully, but this really feels like where Phase II (the proposed second TV series they were going to make in 1976 that turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture) might have gone (given an unlimited FX budget at the time).

There were some details to the models I wasn't crazy about (gridlines), but I thought the choreography was terrific. The flippy-dippy space fights of the past episodes are gone. (It was like Wiley Coyote on crack.) The nacelle caps looked awesome. (This is a big deal to Original Series nerds. There are entire web pages devoted to this effect. This has been a huge sticking point on the new "remastered" Trek that CBS is doing. We're nerds. It's what we do.) They're mostly TOS, but also kind of their own look. Some of it looks a little video-gamey, but it's really nice video-gamey. And that stupid little shuttlepod (curse you, Next Generation!) isn't going to look good anywhere.

I felt the cinematography was a great improvement over past episodes. Some might not like the hand held look, but it's been a TV staple for over ten years now. They certainly didn't go for Firefly / BSG. It didn't feel like big screen, but it didn't feel quite like video either. The widescreen format serves them well.

This Chekov guy was outstanding (the young one). He's not only got his impression down pat, he's actually got charm and wit and warmth. As for Walter Koenig, I gain new respect for him every time I see him get to do something with some teeth. I'm a little sad that they seem to be backpedaling from the ending (must... not... spoil!). The original interviews I read said that NV was the fourth season of Trek and they were writing as if the movies and TNG hadn't necesarily happened. But they've backed off of this a bit.

Cawley (Kirk) is starting to get it. He's almost there. But not quite. (I've since found out that not only is he an Elvis impersonator in his day job, he's one of the leading Elvii in the world! He's one of three guys that they actually let perform at Graceland.) He needs to stop replicating Shatner's tics and start looking at what he actually DID. Shatner was both happier and more serious. He didn't always have his "FIRE!" face on. Cawley is almost to the point of being able to do the quiet stuff. The last scene with Chekov was actually touching. It would be great to see him improve more.

Spock needs to figure out that he's Spock. Not Data. Spock was cranky. He scowled a lot. Nobody ever sems to get the weight that Spock had. I don't know the history of this actor and I hate to throw stones, but you get the idea he's there because he knows someone (or contributed money). Ok, that's pretty heartless, but there it is.

McCoy - Speaking of "who does this guy know"... Wow. This guy is just taking up space. Sorry.

Scotty - Might almost have a character if he can figure out if he wants to do his own thing or be Doohan. Not so good this time out though.

One of the most interesting things about this story is that they suggest that the Federation has an ECONOMY. And it might be harmful to some and benneficial to others! Gene must be spinning in his grave- er, orbit.

I'm still not NV's biggest fan, but this was pretty darn good. The two marks of highest praise I can give this ep: I meant to watch one act last night and watched the whole thing, and it made me excited about watching Star Trek again. That's saying something. I think NV is finally in the same league as Exeter. Now both of them need to get even better. (Boy, I say that like THAT'S easy.)

Oh, speaking of which, the trailer for the fan film I'M working on is up. It rambles, but it actually has some (unfinished) stuff that I did. The Enterprise stuff was filmed on the New Voyages sets and the NV actors that play Kirk and Spock make cameos.

So say we all. (Oh, that's the other one, isn't it?)

Big Engine - Light Weight Hippy Car

Don't know how many of you've seen this one. The makers of Casino Royale obviously did.

Doug Drexler

TrekPlace has a cool interview with Doug Drexler. (No, Trek and Cool are not polar opposites.) He's an old-timer fanboy from the 70's that made it to the big. He worked on most (all?) modern Trek, and now he's on BSG. A couple of highlights:

Tyler: How did you become involved with the Star Trek Giant Poster Book?

Drexler: Ron Barlow and I ran a strange little store, on the corner of 53rd and Third, in Manhattan. It was called "The Federation Trading Post." It was a Star Trek store at a time when there was no Star Trek, and precious little science fiction.

So it's very possible that we met him. The whole fam drove up to New York from Connecticut one day for probably about $2.00 and bucket of peanut butter sandwiches. My aunt wanted to see the U.N. and I (all of seven years old) wanted to see the World Trade Center. I tell her I can still go see the U.N. Anyway, we bought my first Enterprise model kit there.

Drexler: After that I sketched Star Trek, wrote Star Trek and built Star Trek. The most infamous thing my father ever said to me was, "If you spent half the time on your school work, that you spend on that TV show, you'd be ok!" I tease him about that now -- he loves it.

Heh. That sounds familiar. Well, the first part does...

That's a lot of humbug...

Good heavens. I saw a slide at the movies that claimed that A Christmas Carol had been made into something like 80 movies in the twentieth century. (Or was it 200? I forget.) Well, over at Jim Hill Media, he's reviewing forty of them!

BSG Mon- Tuesday: "Hero"

I sense a great disturbance in the Force. BSG is moving to Sunday nights come January. You know, back in 1978, BSG was on Sunday nights...

"Hero". This is where BSG gets into murky waters. I'm sure there were Season 1 eps like this. I KNOW there were S2s like this. This is a treading water episode. I'm sure they have great epic pivitol moments planned. This just ain't one of them. Sometimes the eps are terrific, like "Final Cut". Sometimes they're (say it with me now) "Black Market".

This also falls into the "lets go back an muck with continuity" hole. I don't think this ep contradicts anything per se, but you never got the impression in the miniseries that BSG-75 was not Adama's ship, or that it was any sort of punishment. I'm all for the "let's find out that we didn't really know what we thought we knew" kind of twists. Alan Moore is the Grand Master of it. But it has to fit, otherwise you don't get that wonderful sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when the TV world unravels around you. This didn't fit. This feels like adding the sister that no one ever mentioned before, without the mostly gratifying supernatural explanation. The technical term is "WTF"?

As (mostly) usual, the show managed to get me ready to stand on my chair and scream at the TV (What do you MEAN, WE started the war?!?) and then calm me down by not doing or saying what it clearly looks like they're going to. But they were tricky this time out, so it didn't quite work. I know, I do a terrible job of divorcing the show from the writers that write it and the world that they live in. Adama is supposed to feel bad because his momentary crossing of the Neutral Zone (to see if there even ARE any cylons, after they have ignored meetings at Armistice Station for FORTY YEARS, btw) set of GENOCIDE? Let's talk DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE, guys! "I gave the cylons a reason!" Feh.

And there's NonFatLee backing him up. "NO, Dad, it wasn't you! It was the top brass that, oh, yeah, we swore oaths and stuff to follow, even though we just KNOW that they're a bunch of blood-thirsty war-mongers just WAITING to get back into it with the toasters." Way to make a man feel better about his life's decisions, NFL. Oh, how are those dreams about the Olympic Carrier treating you? You were just following orders then, not your fault at all. I'm all for dramatic tension and tortured self-inspection (I'm an Angel fan after all) but make it make sense! (Unless it's Kara. She doesn't have to make sense. It's part of her charm.)

Laura almost always gets to be the hard cold voice of "That only works on television". And she ALMOST did it. Wild Bill didn't start the war. That's nonsense. (Ahhhh. Heavy sigh of relief.) There were HUNDREDS of ways that WE started the war. Huh? What? Say again? So, the cylons had no responsibility in this? And we did? Are you saying that there's something that should have been done differently Madame President, and THAT would have prevented the attack? I mean, aside from hiring a different defense contractor for your mainframe, and continuing computer security protocols on all of your battlestars and fighters, of course.

I mostly liked the episode. I just didn't like where it started or where it ended. I will be curious what the consequences of this ep will be. (Of course, I'm still thinking that this show always has consequences. We lost that about half-way through S2.) If the cylons know where the fleet is, why are they still playing this cat and mouse junk? Five or six basestars and that's all she wrote, innit? I've always figured that the toasters don't really want to wipe out the fleet. But every time we actually see cylons, when no people are around, they're talking "WE MUST DESTROY THEM ALL OR THEY WILL DESTROY US!" AND THEY HAVE A PLAN. Suuuuuure they do. It's a whole civilization of Starbucks. (The viper pilot, not the coffee shops, of course.)

Oh, and as the Hog of Wart posed the question: Ok, this guy is a tough as nails fighter pilot, and he's just going to go cool his heels at wherever the civvies go these days (since Cloud Nine is cinders)? Because he's emotionally scarred? Good grief, he and Starbuck can be a team! The management of resources in this rag tag fleet, human and otherwise, continues to amaze me.

Any ep that has good EyeTigh work is a bonus as far as I'm concerned, and this one had it. ET seems to be getting back to his old functional disaster self. He's got to be more reliable than "All We Are Saying" Agathon.

Kara got to do stuff, speaking of no consequences. Kara threw that emotional baggage off like an Adama kid throwing off a spare 100 pounds.

We're how many eps in? Eight? We take a week off this week. I figure we'll come back for two, have a heart rending cliff-hanger, and take the Christmas break. The show is still good, but they're not on all cylinders. I attribute this to two reasons: They're not being ruthless with "how would this REALLY go" and they're setting up character threads that they never get back to making work.

On the first point, I imagine they have a problem with a real war time scenario. The first season was a great post-9/11 metaphor. And that was terrific. But unlike the real world where things got back to normal fairly quickly, and if you feel like saying we're at war you can, if you feel like it's all hyped up, you can say that too, these people lost TWELVE PLANETS. They are down to 40,000 human being left anywhere. Attacks are frequent, disasters common place. These folks would harden up pretty quickly. Especially after New Caprica. This would be the remains of a civilization on a 100% war footing. WWII on something-other-than-steroids-cause-I'm-sick-of-the-cliche. But the I don't think the show runners can even imagine a group of people willing and eager to make such sacrifices anymore. Which is too bad, because that would make BSG1 look like a warm-up.

On the second, remember when they juggled The Story of the Week, Laura's cancer AND visions, Boomer and Tyrol, Sharon and Helo, Baltar and Six, and whatever hijinx Lee and Kara were getting up to? With an occasional cut to EyesTigh getting hammered in his bunk? Good times.

Not next ep, but the ep after, is written by Jane "Shindig" Espenson. Wacky fun. No BSG this Friday (and Moore still hasn't posted the podcast!) so see you in two weeks! Boom boom boom.

EDIT: I made sure I wrote this before I read Goldberg's comments. They are here. He nails it better than I do. But he gets paid for it.

Half-Life 2 Ep Delay

From Planet Half-Life:

"According to a recent talk that our friends over at CVG had with Doug Lombardi, Valve will miss their target release of Q1 2007 for the Episode 2 package. The new target release season is the summer of 2007.

No official reason has been given for the delay."

Drat! I mean, can we really WAIT for THIS?



Or THIS?



YES you have to wait for my BSG review. Waiting is good for you. Besides, Ron Moore didn't do his podcast. He's making me WAIT. Grrrr. (Arrgh.)

For the Moment, At Least, There Are Limits

Nice to know our society won't tolerate absolutely everything, yet. (Sadly, Paris Hilton's fifteen minutes continue.)

Then of course, there's this. A few months ago Mel Gibson got into no end of trouble over hateful remarks he made while REALLY REALLY drunk. That was front page news. This is all stuff that was said in public, supposedly while sober. Where's the comparable outrage?

TOO SOON!

I turned on the radio on Friday and heard Christmas music. I LOVE Christmas music. Just not before Thanksgiving. (Mind you, I hadn't quite gotten it into my head that Thanksgiving was only a week away, so that made it even worse.)

One Ring, or Maybe Two

Well this is an interesting development. These sorts of things never end well. Look at Superman II (and ultimately III). Look at Never Say Never Again. (You don't have to, it's an expression.)

I'm not a Jackson fan. Just not. Still haven't seen King Kong, maybe that will change my mind. My problems with LotR can be summed up with the fact that he made Gollum falling into the Cracks of Doom into a laugh moment. On the other hand beneath the mis-steps (in my mind) of the films is the firm conviction that those movies are love letters to the books that they're based on. Even if Jackson and I disagree on how he handled it, and have a (very) different sense of humor, I think he loves the books more than I do.

On the one hand I see a Jacksonless Hobbit as an opportunity. OTOH, I can easily see them going too far to be closer to Jackson's LotR or going too far to distinguish themselves from it. Ah well. Maybe in 50 years I'll get to see new movies of all four books that I love. (I'd be 87. Well, that seems unlikely...)

Honda

Another chance to be amazed at how people can make a living in today's world.

Game Night at the Edwards' House!

Bwahahaha.

Never. Moving. To. California.

" "It's basically a branding program, or a recruiting program for the military," Kelly said before the meeting."

(Pixar? I didn't mean you. You know that, right?)

Wakka wakka wakka!

Lord Voldemort

I don't recall this being my favorite book. I'm sure someone will disagree with me. But hey, the movie looks cool.

The Often Discovered Country

"Death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns" unless you're on Star Trek, then we can't get rid of you!

This has been making the rounds for a few weeks now, but I just watched it. It's not exactly X-Men 3 (where we got to see a much younger Patirck Stewart and Ian McKellen), but then again remember when Forrest Gump was cutting edge? And then two years later Deep Space Nine did them one better on a TV bugdet? I keep saying, we'll see all of these people again in the 21 century. There aren't any movie stars that can replace Harrison Ford (including Harrison Ford). So let's make new movies with Ford '81 (2.0). (What we REALLY need is a Lucas '77. But I may have mentioned this before... Heh - Celebrity Death Match: THX-1139 Lucas vs. Attack of the Clones Lucas. Huzzah!)

The King of the Barbers, the Barber of Kings

Well, this project just gets more and more disturbing. Yes, I'm looking forward to it, that's not the point.

I Suffer, You Suffer

HT: Todd.

A Wooden Leg Named Smith!

Good heavens. Did anyone else know about this?

(Don't you just love obscure in-joke subject titles? I could have said "Yes! Well I don't mind that quite so much. At any rate, it's TRADITIONAL." Well, it made ME laugh. And I love to-- never mind.)

p.s. The editors appologize for the flagrant and obviously intentional non-use of Supercalifraglisticexpialidocious in this post. The writer's nose has been given a tweak and he has been told that he is bad.

Trot still Foxy

Nice to see that Foxtrot is still high-larious after 20 years (ok, 18).

Monday BSG - A Measure of Salvation

(A Measure of Salvation is the title of the episode, and not my feelings towards BSG. If they were all as good as 33 / Kobol's Last Gleaming / Scar / Exodus: Part 2, well then maybe.)

Ok. Here it is, and it came very quickly. This is the Waarthog episode. We have the opportunity to wipe out the Toasters. And almost everyone made the right choice. Nice to have you back, Airlock. Billy A. was a little skwishy, but he knew how to get it done when it came to it. The whole Dark Lee thing is finally starting to pay off a little (even if I had it figured out a long time before he did). Unfortunately the show that managed to convince me that they might actually blow up the title ship and change the name of the show to Battlestar: Pegasus did not for a moment convince me that they might take out the Big Bads. Ah, well.

I will say AGAIN, that I think that wiping out the entire cylon population is a questionable thing and something to be avoided and probably lamented. I think that if the Cols slugged it out over generations, found Earth, built themselves back up to a viable civilization, and found themselves with the power to turn off the bad guys once and for all, then no, I don't think that would be the right choice. If it were then this would be a very boring show and the cylons would be very boring characters. They wouldn't even be on the level of HAL. The fact that the cylons made a CHOICE to wipe out the human race means they have free will and all that implies. They may even have souls. This is science fiction and this is the conceit that we are presented with. Run with it. If they were JUST machines then they wouldn't be hated. Nobody hates the mill that blew up or the mine shaft that collapses. ANYWAY: Back to the We Win the Day and They Must All Die scenario. Well, if we can defend against the cylons then there is no reason to wipe them all out down to every last little mnemonic circuit. "They wiped us out, so we can wipe them out" is a dumb argument. You destroy (methodically and dispassionately) their means to make war against you and you do your level best to make friends. This method worked pretty well after WWII.

BUT that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking just over 40 thousand folks in the human race against an overwhelming force that may or may not insist on our total destruction (what day is it?). There is no margin. If you pass up this opportunity, there may not be another. This was really for all the marbles. Sorry, Carl. You made the right choice at the really really wrong time. Listen to your wife. This isn't a war for territory or even ideology. This is for survival. Act like it. Of course, he even has the line that makes this still a pretty terrific ep: "Let's keep this all about me." They do, and so the ep can be interesting, ask questions, draw some conclusions, and the only real frak up is Helo. Poor guy. Good thing none of those daring young men and women in their flying machines got into trouble (of the burning wreckage and death in the unforgiving blackness of space variety). I'd have liked to have seen the Agathons at THAT funeral. Get EyeTigh back in CiC, thanks.

Remember when Adama overthrew the Colonial government because Laura interfered with a military op? One that was going to take out a SINGLE base star? (Do they still call them basestars, or am I channeling 1978?) Now with Helo he's just going to let it slide. I wonder how the crew talks about Wild Bill Adama? "Ok, you can TOTALLY break regs any way you want, just make sure you're necessary to the crew (not some third level launch deck flunky like Socinus) and whatever you do DON'T do anything that the old man will take personally (unless you've been involved with one or both of his sons)!" Wonder if any of those wacky spunks from Collaborators are still around? I think Helo's little field trip had better stay one of the best kept secrets in the fleet. Come to that, where IS Anders?

Speaking of Anders, Kara's back on flight status??? Guess she didn't tee of Adama THAT bad (see above). Heh, Hot Dog has a Mark VII and Kara has a Mark II. Wonder what Kat's flying? And where is the one-eyed drunken wonder this week? Nice to see ADA in a background shot. So, everyone hears about the discovery of the Lion's Eye (or whatever) AND a deserted toaster ship and THAT'S when they decide to get their hair done? (Airlock, Helo, and Gaeta, in case you missed it.)

The Gauis Baltar show was ok, it got pretty well overshadowed by the Helo story. And they didn't do anything particularly unexpected. When things start to go WELL for GB again, THAT will be surprising. The whole Three / Six / GB triangle is boring before it starts. (The Caprica Six / Chip Six / GB triangle is woefully undershown.) I'm not buying that Three is going to go all mushy over GB just because he said he loves her (under torture). John McCain probably loves her too. (Ouch, sorry.) OTOH, now that I think about it, GBs profession of undying (yet not very reliable) love for Six is always touching in a profoundly damaged kind of way. One really does have to think of how undeniably brilliant Gaius has to be that he was able to function at ALL back in the Colonies before the holocaust. If he ever came up anything like second best he would have been flushed away like the annoying, self-serving, incapable little rat that he is. I'm assuming he was already very successful before Six came along and wrote the Colonial Defense Systems for him and made him into the Colonies' answer to a combination of Stephen Hawking and Mick Jagger.

Still not watching to "next weeks", so I have no idea where we're going, but I'll be here next week with a new review. So say we all.

p.s. I was watching "33" last week and I realized how much longer the Boom Boom Booms were. They really hung on a shot so you could get a really good sense of time and place. Much more spoilery, I can see that. The new ones are much quicker, more punchy. THIS week, SWIMW flatly declared that Athena was going to save them all because she'd seen it in the BBBs. That's why I love them.

p.p.s. On the Blood-Thirsty-War-Monger boards that I read (i.e. conservative, i.e. The Corner) this has been hailed as The Worst Episode Ever. These people must be Clockwork Oranged and made to watch Black Market again.

BSG How Lee Got Fat

SPOILERS! Go get caught up, slackers!



Did this conclude very effectively this season? Not so much. Was a TERRIFIC part of the finale last season. Oh yeah. It was even a really good part of the opening this season. I love seeing muscular and fit Jamie Bamber with Fat Lee's head. It's a hoot.

They Were Drunk!

"The young men "engaged in behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in," the lawsuit says." Yeah, because that defence worked REAL well for Mel Gibson.

Not Making Me Feel Better

From Over the Hedge today...

With Great Power...

You know the rest. Well, the trailer looks great. Looks like Tobey is still really good a being Peter Parker and that's always a good thing. I'm still a little skitish, I guess because I own Spidey 2 on DVD and I've never watched it all the way through. (I have since watched Spidey 1 a couple of times.) But maybe they'll get it back for this one.

Joe Sweden - Poluting our language since 1997, But Not Much Before

a) Myself, I've been saying Not So Much at least since Mad About You.

2) Most of the screwy way I talk pre-dates Joss Whedon-y goodness like a thing that predates another really pre-dated thing. And that's just shiny.

That's all I'm sayin'.

It Begins

This is what the next two years look like.

Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the expected chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a Democrat-led Senate, said on Wednesday he thought Bolton's nomination was "going nowhere."

I Don't Know, I'm Making This Up As I Go...

I've known about this site for a number of years. And this one (and others like it - the hat is a tricky thing). Never quite managed to drop the hammer and get any of these. Now I find out that Wested is making these too! It's the Rocketeer! Yikes! (Wouldn't mind getting an Indy shirt either...) It's like insanely expensive sports cars. Nice to talk about a lot, but I'll need a new computer some day.

More!

I have discovered the greates ice cream flavor ever!

One Ping Only

Aw, suck. Basil Poledouris is gone. I don't own Conan (not a fan of the movie, but what a score!) so now I'm going to have to play Hunt for Red October a lot today. Maybe I'll go get Conan. Robocop may be some of the best music to play Laser Quest to ever.

Goldsmith, Bernstein, Kamen... It's been a rough couple of years for flim music.

Fun Toy

Here's a neat little thing.

You can do nerdy stuff like this:

I love it when a plan comes together...

BSG has been forever tainted for me. From the illustrious Mr. Riley:

"I was thinking how perfect it would be if one of the remaining five Cylons is Dirk Benedict. Then I realized- the final five must be The A-Team!"

BSG Monday - Torn

Well, it's Monday again. Only 5 more days until another ep of BSG. That might be okay this time around. We need a little recovery time. Believe it or not, BSG has gotten DARKER. Wow. How did SWIMW put it? "I don't feel good about ANYTHING in that episode." Huzzah! At least we're watching something brighter and happier in the meantime: Buffy season 6. I mean... Er... Darn.

The Agathon family: Well, looks like they got hitched after all (Helo calls Sharon Lt. Agathon). Didn't see ADA (Anastasia Dualla-Adama) this week at ALL. Or the former Mr. Starbuck. So Sharon is now "Athena"? Wow, this show reaches out and pulls the strings on the old school Galactica fans when you least expect it. Athena was Adama's daughter and Apollo and Zack's sister on the original BSG. She worked in CiC (although they didn't call it that). So when are they going to introduce Serina? Or Cassiopeia? (Jolly bought it in the mini.) The Sharon hasn't hit the fan yet with the whole "Sorry we lied about your baby" storyline. That will be fun. Racetrack is going to just push the "eject" button the next time they see a Cylon base ship. It never goes well when she's flying with an Eight.

EyeTigh: Still the wacky fun with the Tigh storyline. And now he's in cahoots with Starbuck. THAT'S healthy. Seems to me the Old Man cut him a little more slack than he did Kara.

(which brings us to) Kara "Razor Cut" Thrace: Ahh, she also is in a happy happy place. Although she seems to be trying to pull out by the end of the ep. Always fun when Cat is the rational Viper pilot of the pair. I have to admit, it's interesting to see her and Tigh palling around. Even if they are making their own little hell together and inviting all of their friends.

Bill "YOU'VE DONE A MAN'S JOB, SIR!" Adama: Always a good idea to give Eddie the boiling-just-under-the-surface-run-for-your-lives speech. He'll score the touchdown every time. And he gets to kick Kara's chair. "Leave this room while you still can" indeed. I love how Kara looks like she's thinking of trying something incredibly stupid, but knows that even she's not that crazy or dumb.

Felix G. still needs a haircut. I mean he looks cool as all getout, but it takes me out of our military settings right away. Helo could use a clip too. But it's nice to see Felix becoming the New Baltar (aka Research Guy). Maybe not all the brains, but a lot more credibility. Unless FELIX is a cylon, which seems unlikely.

Lee "How Come My Stories Always Get Cut" Adama: We don't have TIME for anything interesting, so he's skinny again! Bippity boppity boo! And he's a Major. Maybe he'll get more to do than "Black Market" this year. (Eccchhh!) Gosh, wouldn't it be nice to see a story with him and the President again? Wouldn't that be cool? I haven't seen a main character abandoned like this since Xander. But he had more scenes than the wif.

Mr. and Mrs. Tyrol: I heard him yell something AT Cally, but did we actually see her? They're better at keeping all the balls in the air than they were in 2.5, but not as good as 1. I WILL keep harping on this.

The Gaius Baltar show: He's like Capt. Jack Sparrow without the dumb luck. He NEVER makes the right choice and it NEVER goes well for him. His entire character is about making the WRONG choices. He lies not only when he has no reason to, but when it's to his distinct disadvantage to! I can see that they seem to be leading us to the conclusion that GB is a Cylon. Possibly one of the FIVE (who are starting to take on mythic properties). I will be so BORED if that's the case. But I have faith that they'll pull it out. Six looking hurt / annoyed at GB is becoming one of my favorite parts of the show, just because it's so at odds with the Six that lives in his brain. It plays against the "Watch BSG cause it's got GURLS!" vibe that tends to be in all the promo stuff for the show (and why I didn't watch when the show started up). You do have to wonder what the Baltar in her head is saying about all of this. Probably telling her that the real GB being a sniviling, whining, lying bundle of skin (instead of vibrant, charming, and brilliant) is all HER fault. Whee! Cylon guilt!

Karan S'jet has joined the cast of BSG!

Leoben was more interesting when he was being talking about than anything he's done on-screen this season.

Earth has left collectibles! Cool! My best case scenario for this show would be a 4-5 year run (however long it can stay interesting) that actually ENDS. I mean, I know it's not B5 or anything, but still. Hey, didn't the colonials run into a killer virus on the way to Earth (when THEY found Kobol) in the original BSG? So now it's toaster specific. Interesting.

Ahh well, it CAN'T get darker than this, right? (Heh heh heh heh...) 15 eps to go.

p.s. We watched on iTunes, so we didn't even HAVE "Next Week". Bwahahaha!

Cliches Are a Dime a Dozen: Avoid Them Like the Plague

Today is apparently National Cliche day. And this scares me.

STILL haven't tried this...

But this is really a new level, dontcha think?

He Was For the Joke Before He Was Against It

This makes me laugh more than anything I've seen today.




This was Senator John Kerry on Monday (for those of you that missed it):

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Now he's saying that he wasn't talking about the troops, he was making fun of the president. Not sure that makes is MUCH better, but lets take him at his word.

If George Bush gets good grades he can do well, but if George Bush doesn't George Bush ends up in Iraq.

Well, George Bush is not in Iraq, so George Bush must be smart. People IN Iraq on the other hand must be dumber than George Bush. And we KNOW that George Bush is really dumb (right? Sarcasm, guys, sarcasm). Not really helping here Senator. I must be missing the nuance.

John Kerry IS the October surprise.

Of course, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Duck's Quack

For those of you that read Non-Sequitur I offer this. So it's about as accurate as Wiley's political commentary. (Too bad, he's a really funny guy otherwise.)

70's Kidvid

Ok, this site is just alarming. I'd say I remember about 75% of these shows. Even Run, Joe, Run. I think this was one of Scott's favorites. Shazam! is a treasured part of my childhood I hope never to revisit (although I'm still a huge Captain Marvel fan - they need to make a movie pronto while Adam Balwin gets too old). Ark II was the ultimate in Saturday Morning "We're destroying the environment" (back then it was just "the world") indoctrination. Land of the Lost, of course, is a classic. (For those of you that are afraid of the Sleestak, I direct you here.)