Dana Carvey on Live with Regis and Kelly this morning, speaking in a “gosh-and-begorrah” Irish accent:
“You’ve got to be grateful in this life. You’ve got to be grateful there’s not a tiny man in your pants whacking at your weiner with a hammer.”
Timeless wisdom indeed.
As I promised at the end of the previous entry, I’d like to say a few things about Dirk Benedict’s essay on the new Battlestar Galactica series. Be warned that things go off into some distinctly ranty territory toward the end. I didn’t intend to rant when I first started writing this, but I got on a roll and managed to say a few things I’ve been trying to think of how to say, so take it or leave it at your discretion.
The other night I was lurking on a message board, silently observing the continuing bloodshed between the Old-School Faithful and the Remake Upstarts over which version of the television show in question most deserves to be blown out an airlock. The links were flying fast and furious as each side tried to bolster their own insecure opinions with external references. It didn’t take long before the links started looking more interesting than the pointless, unwinnable argument, so I clicked one of them. I found myself reading a year-old harangue by none other than Dirk Benedict, the actor who played the original (male) Starbuck in the ’78 version of Battlestar Galactica.
(I know what you’re thinking: aw, frak! Not another Battlestar Galactica entry! Not after that big long rambling review, and that angry rant last week, and all the references dropped into entries throughout the two months before that… I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But I think this is kind of interesting, so please bear with me.)
It’s not a pretty piece of writing. From a technical standpoint, Dirk has a rather odd way of putting his thoughts together, and from a substance standpoint, he comes across as something of a male chauvinist. He’s pretty bitter about the remake (at least he was when he wrote this), and some of his comments are, if I may say so, curiously Republican in tone. (I say “curiously” because I’ve always assumed Mr. Benedict, who is a well-known advocate for New Age-y macrobiotic diets, was one of them wacky California libruls. It seems he’s a bit more complex than I have given him credit for.)
Still, he makes some good points, and I found the essay both amusing and thought-provoking. I couldn’t find an original source for the essay, so I am reprinting it in its entirety here. Enjoy.
I like it.
I didn’t think I would. I even tried not to, out of loyalty to the series that I grew up with and still enjoy. But in the end (and to my surprise), I find that I actually do like the new Battlestar Galactica. It’s a good series on its own terms, and it’s also the rare example of a remake that improves on the original by taking it seriously.
That’s not to say, however, that I like it without reservation. There are aspects of it that don’t quite work for me, and, as I’ve already mentioned a couple of times, I’m not at all comfortable with the fact that this show is on track to replace the original in our collective pop-cultural memories. Nevertheless, I can’t deny that Ron Moore, the driving force behind the remake, has created something that is honestly worthy of the attention the show is receiving.
In addition to his personal blog, writer John Scalzi also maintains an AOL Journal called By the Way. It’s a paid gig — how would it be? — intended to promote AOL Journals and provide tips and hints for those who have one. Every week on this site, John comes up with Weekend Assignments, which are essentially the same thing as the memes that float around the LiveJournal community, just scenarios or suggestions to encourage people to think about themselves and start writing. This week’s Assignment is a fun one:
Congratulations! Hollywood is making a movie of your life, and you get to choose any actor you want to play you — yes, even if they’re dead (the things they can do with special effects!) Who do you choose and why?
Extra credit: Name the musician/band who will play the theme song to the movie.
Now obviously, any casting decision of this magnitude can’t be taken lightly, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time considering the matter…
I received an email this morning from a fellow named Rex, who is the proprietor of The Deep Throat Blog and a proponent of the theory that the infamous (yet anonymous) Watergate informant was actually Ferris Bueller’s economy teacher. Rex informed me that since I and other bloggers linked to one of his articles last month, he’s been receiving lots of interesting new clues, the latest of which is detailed in his most recent entry.
Essentially, this new piece of the puzzle connects the dates on which reporter Woodward met with Deep Throat with the dates when the McGovern Campaign was in or near Washington, D.C. (Background for those who don’t their recent history: McGovern was the Democratic candidate for president that Nixon’s people were trying to bring down by, among other things, bugging the campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.) As Rex describes it, this clue fits the so-called “Bradlee Riddle,” explains why Woodward couldn’t call a meeting with DT whenever he wanted, and lends credence to the Ben Stein theory:
…in our opinion, Deep Throat must have been someone who wasn’t normally in Washington. We think Throat was someone at the Republican CRP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) who traveled around the country conducting operations against the Democrats, much like Don Segretti. This person could have been a “mole” on McGovern’s staff (and the Watergate hearings uncovered at least one named Thomas Gregory) or someone who carried out “sabotage” against the Democrats such as hiring hecklers, demonstrators, etc. Our theory is that Ben Stein worked with the CRP and met with Woodward when his travels took him to the Washington/Baltimore area.
As I explained to Rex, I’m not a serious Watergate buff. I haven’t done a lot of extensive reading or research on the matter, beyond seeing the fine movie with Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and Hal Holbrook (All the President’s Men) and reading the occasional article. But I am interested in historical mysteries, and they don’t get much more mysterious than this one. The Ben Stein theory is plausible (in my opinon, at least), and Rex’s blog makes for an interesting read. Go check it out. (You’ll probably want to review his detailed explanation of the Stein theory as well.)
That blogger I recently discovered, Javier Grillo-Marxuach (who also happens to be a writer for the TV phenom Lost), cleared something up for me today:
my friends shrink tells him that there are two kinds of people in this world. the kind of person that goes through life, sires a bunch of kids, gets divorced tons of times, drinks like a fish and comes out the other end with nary a sign of unhappiness because they are just not prone to introspection… and those who have “an artistic temperament.”
I don’t know about you, but I think this explains a great deal…
According to the calendar, it was still winter on Saturday. I spent the afternoon crusing around with the top down on my Mustang. I was perfectly comfortable in a thin Levi’s jacket, and I got my cheeks nicely sunburned.
This morning — the first official day of spring — I woke up to three inches of snow and a blustery wind that had me reaching for the parka. Weather is like that in Utah.
I can only surmise that Mother Nature is actually a family of sisters, and my home state got assigned to the one who drinks too much Frangelico and likes to knit little scarves for weenie dogs…
Before I proceed with my long-promised review of the new Battlestar Galactica remake series, there’s something I want to get off my chest: I am really sick and tired of the way every article I read about the new show starts out by trashing the original series. What is it about American culture that we can’t complement one thing without denigrating something else? It’s almost like one of Newton’s laws — for every positive word spoken there must be an equal and opposite insult.
TV Guide is especially guilty of this kind of needless hostility. For example, in next week’s issue, critic Matt Roush begins his comments about the new show’s season ender by saying, “If anyone had predicted a year ago that I’d be hooked on a new version of Battlestar Galactica — that cheesily juvenile and insipid ‘Star Wars’ wannabe from the late ’70s — I’d have laughed.”
That sort of remark is all too common in the press on Neo-G, and it really pisses me off.
[UPDATE: I wrote this entry in the wee hours last night and, upon reflection in the clear light of morning, decided it wasn’t quite right. What can I say? Sometimes it really is best to let something cool a bit before you publish it. I have therefore streamlined the whole thing to intensify the one point I think I was really trying to make. Sorry for the confusion… ]
Funny thing about James Lileks. I can wonder for months why I continue to read his self-important, reactionary and often paranoid post-9/11 drivel, and then one day he’ll just spew out something that makes all the grumpy-old-man-ishness worthwhile. Case in point: his comments today about the upcoming Revenge of the Sith…
The new SW movie trailer looks incredible — if they’d showed this to fans in 1979, I think most of them would have spontaneously dissolved. I have no doubt the dialogue will be horrible… I don’t care. If it looks like the trailer, I know I will sit in a movie theater on a Friday afternoon and quite possibly feel 18 again. This is no great accomplishment; art, you could say, should raise you up, not lull you back to the sloshing amniotic sea of the womb. But it’s a movie with rockets and robots and ray guns, and I’m a guy who grew up loving rockets and robots and ray guns. Hence I like to see the same once in a while, done well, without Bruce Dern moping around in a Jesus robe weeping about pine trees.
James just managed to eloquently sum up, in a sentence and a half, what I’ve so often spent hours trying to explain to my disillusioned friends who mock me for my continued loyalty to the Great Flanneled One: “it’s a movie with rockets and robots and ray guns, and I’m a guy who grew up loving rockets and robots and ray guns. Hence I like to see the same once in a while…”
Amen, man. I often think Lileks is totally up in the night with his opinions, but on that point, we are in absolute agreement. I’m looking forward to May because I’m hoping to feel, if only for a short time, like a wide-eyed boy of seven instead of a tired and wounded old man of 35…
[Ed. note: the crack about Bruce Dern in a Jesus robe refers to the 1972 film Silent Running, just in case you’re not up on your classics of dystopic science fiction. Lileks has a big problem with the cynicism common to all films of this era, science fictional and otherwise. Personally, I quite like the dark movies of the early ’70s. But then I don’t politicize every damn thing the way he does.]