Battlestar Galactica Sex Appeal

Captain Apollo, with human civilization destroyed, it's obvious where you now spend most of your time. At the gym!

DC-related unintended double entendre of the day. Overheard on the train:

"He's deep in the annals of power."

Shameless Self-Promotion

Don't got enough friends yet, Mark Zuckerberg? Need more? Pathetic.

Bros Watch Forever

Battlestar Galactica Eps. 4-8

With only a foot into a long television series, or a novel for that matter, there’s always the temptation to extrapolate four or five hours of initial material into a thesis for the entire work. Sometimes the stretch works; the entire 80 plus hours of the Sopranos never really delves beyond the dark and family-focused boundaries that the first two episodes mark. Shows like the Wire and Lost though seem to have a case of plot ADD, never able to spend more than a season on a single story or group.
So indulge me for a single paragraph while I set forth my extrapolation of the entire four season plus webisodes series.

Battlestar Gallactica is an inquiry into what it means to be human cloaked in a sci-fi series. As the series progresses, the differences between the Cylons and the humans will only grow more and more bleary. The humans’ resolve will steel while the exact nature of the Cylons will become clear and they will be shown to have souls even though they are machines. The first eight episodes feel like Lost season one having seen the rest of the series. What you see is not what you get. Battlestar Gallactica is not a show about jet fighters and battles for supremacy between the humans and the Cylons. Instead, the series will try and answer exactly what makes humans unique and human when there is an identical race that is clearly not human.
OK. No more musings and speculation. Onto summary.

Episodes 4 and 5
Episodes four and five form one continuous episode bridged with a To Be Continued… in the middle. Has there ever been a To Be Continued so early in a series? I don’t think so.
The episode begins with a party for one of the battle pilots celebrating his 1000th landing. During the celebration, an accident occurs and a bomb blows up killing many of the fighter pilots. Because of this loss of skilled pilots, Commander Adama asks Starbuck to train a new set of fighter pilots.
The request to train new pilots brings up bad memories for Starbuck. You close watching watchers will remember that she passed Zak Adama through his flight training—the Commanders son and Apollo’s bro—because she was sleeping with him and not because he had the chops. It turns out she was not just sleeping with Zak, but they were engaged (and also having some steamy sex). In order not to have a repeat of this, she summarily flunks every new flight recruit Adama sends her.
Lots of discussion and drama ensues. Commander Adama finds out that she cheated Zak through training, kicks her out of his office, and tells her to train the god damned pilots. She says “Yes, Sir.” On the first of the new flights out, a Cylon fighter squadron is spotted, and in her remorse, Starbuck takes them on alone, killing them all, but also terminally damaging her fighter. She rockets down to a nearby planet.
Back at the fleet, Apollo and Adama are feeling guilty that they might have caused Starbuck to suicidally take on the Cylon fighters. They order the entire planet to be searched for her. President Roslin puts a stop to the search because it is endangering the entire fleet and wasting fuel. Apollo and Adama admit they are being too emotional, but WAIT! At the last possible moment, Starbuck reappears, flying a Cylon fighter she found on the planet!
Episode 6
Kaboom! The Cylons are infiltrating the Galactica and wreaking havoc blowing up stuff, and just who was the negligent crew member who allowed them in? In an attempt to allow for the rule of law, Adama with the consent of the President calls an independent tribunal to investigate who failed to prevent the Cylon from boarding. What at first is an orderly investigation fast morphs into a which hunt with Adama himself being called before the tribunal and accused of negligence. Adama dissolves the tribunal, but he realizes that he must tell the rest of the fleet that the Cylons now look just like humans. We learn that it was actually Deck Crew Chief Tyrol who let the Cylon in… or perhaps his Asian lover and secret Cylon Boomer. Boomer doesn’t know she is a Cylon, but her actions are starting to draw suspicion.
Episode 7
Gaius and Number 6 (the Blonde) get into an argument about whether there is a single god or multiple gods. It quickly becomes clear that Gaius doesn’t believe in either, and Number 6 vanishes from his head. She then pops up in the command center, as a defense specialist claiming that Gaius blew up key defense computers right before the Cylon attack. Gaius eventually repents dedicating his future life to God as long as he is allowed to survive. With his admission, Number 6 goes back into his head, Adama frees him.
Episode 8
The humans have captured a Cylon! And he is a slippery, mind-playing one at that. Because of her no-nonsense reputation, Starbuck is assigned to interrogate him and find out where he has hidden a nuclear bomb within the fleet. She tortures him but feels no remorse because he is not a human. They talk about theology, he professes to see the future and know the universe; she claims he’s a toaster oven. President Rosalind gets involved and at first appears abhorred that he has been tortured, but in a pretty cool scene she coldly orders him tossed into outer space. Unlike the Prez, Starbuck witnesses the Cylon’s death and is wracked by doubt wondering if he might indeed have a soul. The episode ends with Starbuck praying to the God’s for the Cylon just in case he does have one.
I’ve neglected to mention anything happening on Caprica with Boomer and that other guy. It’s a pretty lame plotline, we’ll update you if anything becomes of it.

...And the home of the free

Next Week on Bros Watch Forever:

Season one of BSG draws to a close.

One rather poorly executed episode was not nearly enough to keep me from losing my shit at the end of this week's regimen. Shit's starting to get crazy/good. More from Alex soon. Links in the comments.

When playing poker, I always find it harder to play against dumb players because I can never predict what they do.

Comic Review: Batman and Robin #1-2

"Batman is dead.* Robin is now Batman and Batman's evil son is now Robin. Everything is new again."

This is how writer Grant Morrison answered when asked how he would sell the new comic Batman and Robin to non-Batman readers.  The title's a success on many levels, not the least being that despite the seventy years of history bearing down on the characters, this is really all incoming readers need to know.

For the last few years, Morrison has been mining the more outlandish areas of Batman’s history. In particular, he's sought out ways to make the kid-friendly, day-glo stories of the fifties and sixties cohere with the
approach taken by writers after Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. When talking about Batman and Robin, he has a tendency to name-drop the '60s TV series and David Lynch in the same sentence. The first issues feature new-Batman-old-Robin Dick Grayson and hyperviolent ten year-old Damian Wayne confront a new group of villains who are equal parts Wind in the Willows and Brazil. It's a conscious pop pastiche, and fun, inventive genre storytelling.

Frank Quitely is Morrison's illustrator here, as in earlier collaborations like an early-2000s stint on X-Men and the near-perfect All-Star Superman. Quitely's a master draftsperson, and a true original. Where other artists’ lines would be straight, Quitely’s have minute ripples--his figures and objects are expertly composed but unreal, unstable.  His characters designs, similarly, are funhouse mirror takes on old standards--cartoon grotesqueries with convincing density and weight. Issue two is worth checking out for Quitely's handling of a fight sequence alone. It's rhythmic, humorous and totally distinct.

* Mild spoiler: Bruce Wayne isn't really dead, he's trapped in time, which Morrison made an open secret for readers at the end of almost-end-of-the-universe comic Final Crisis.

BUT DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT--!

Issue 1
Issue 2
BONUS: All-Star Superman #5, maybe the best example of what it is Morrison and Quitely do so well

I wanted to do Hoodrat stuff with my friends

-Special Thanks to Ellen Sciuto for the find.

No. 5?

Karl Malden, Everyman Actor. Dead at 97.

Even people we don't know but were famous are dying!

Try Asking A YouTube Video

Dear CONTEST + Demo: Cheap at Home Tanning Youtube Video,

I recently married into a prevalent southern family, however; I retained my own last name. He is very supportive, and his parents have not actually voiced any argument. The issue is their friends and other family members who are shocked and horrified that I would be so tacky and offensive as to not take his name. They ignore my polite requests that I be addressed both professionally and personally by my real name. The passive aggressiveness of this southern community I have moved into astounds me. Some of them claim "it's too confusing to know how to address you".

My husband backs me up, but he's never around when it happens. I do not wish to embarrass myself or my new family by being rude to these people, but I'm at the end of my rope. Being called the wrong name and receiving mail addressed to Mrs. His Last Name is like a slap in the face to me, especially when coming from people who know what my name is. Advice??
Thank you for your consideration.

-Musty in Monroe

Dear MiM,

I'm like a ghost. Thank you soooo much for this video. I'm paler than pale but I can't be bothered to tan, fake or otherwise. Yay for probably being the palest person on the beach, smothered in suncream! But, This one gave me some faith that I could be a little bit tan as well. I'm a total irish girl, and even though I'm only 23, I was diagnosed with a pretty severe form of sun related skin cancer, and I just don't really mess around with tanning anymore. Only problem is I'm moving from Indiana to Florida, like tomorrow! wooo irish!!

I know that in New Zealand tanning beds are not really common, agreed its not "our generation" it's more our parents and grandparents. Most people here and in Australia are the ones who were brought up covered in the zinc and really aware of the effects of the sun and tanning beds. another way to prevent your feet from getting stained is to stand on an old towel, it absorbs the excess mist so it doesn't pool arounf your feet. Do you know How much of the product fades away (if any) after you get out of the shower or wash your face?

what's your email?

Where the hell was Goofy?

Of everything I could possibly do in my life, this is very low on the list.



Who is more desperate here, John or Erika?

SUMMER JAMS

Summer jams. Everybody's got one!* I think mine is "I Got A Lot (New New New)" by Mika Miko. Is there a song yet you're gonna think back to when you think of summer '09?



* You don't actually have to have one if you don't want to. It should be a choice.

Who is Next!?

Who is Next To Die?
And What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Architecture Beat: Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing

The problem with architects and the museums they design is usually one of excess. With large endowments and the need to appear cutting edge, big museums will often give an architect unprecedented freedom to cobble together whatever he wants in his most iconic and daring style. While this freedom might create spectacular buildings (cf. Gehry's Guggenheim-Bilbao and Calatrava's addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum), do the sweeping and oddly angled walls of these buildings create good museums? Do you visit a museum for the building itself or for what the building contains? And isn't wrong that there be competition between the two in the first place?

Renzo Piano avoids even the appearance of architectural preemption with his new Modern Wing of the Chicago Art Institute. The outside soars with airiness almost floating off the ground. The windows are all tall and vertical, the beams regular and white. Instead of a roof, an expanse of white lattice tops off the building. Reinforcing the lightness, a long, sinewy ramp connects Millennium Park to the upper floor of the addition. I don't remember seeing any structural support for the bridge, but it didn't look like it needed it at all.


















But while the outside wows, the inner galleries sparkle with neutrality. The angles are all orthogonal, the rooms large but never large enough to dwarf the art hanging inside them. The art hangs evenly on the walls. All of the galleries sit off a large central hall way that spans up all three floors. It's a nice mediating room between oversized dimensions of the outside and the personal dimensions of the galleries. I think my favorite part of the inside is the third floor's ceiling. Piano uses a glass ceiling to let us see the latticing above. It makes for a space that is clearly indoors until you look up and see the sky. The inside is so subdued that after the art on the walls, the biggest visual draw is skyline visible outside the windows. The tall windows allow for the entire height of the buildings to be viewed. It's a perfectly composed cityscape scene.

Everybody's fave architect Frank Lloyd Wright said that forms always follows function. Go to any house of his, and you can clearly see that he never followed his own maxim. His chairs are uncomfortable, his houses sag and creak, but ironically, his Guggenheim museum synthesizes the two in that building's iconic, long, spiraling-skyward central gallery. It's ironic because so many other architects have fallen off the wagon when asked to make such grand spaces. Renzo Piano fortunately defied the odds with The Modern Wing.