It's been hard to come up with a single topic and dig in, but I've got a lot of little bits of fluff floating around my brain these days. Is it just me, or are there times in one's life that are just attractants of "things" - when one is like a sponge? And then there's times when one is like a Victorian trunk, shut tight to get through a bumpy passage - when every cell is saying: do NOT give me any additional information! Well, right now seems to be pretty spongy.
I've been really entertained recently by certain things I've heard or watched. Most recently, I was watching The Colbert Report, and he had on this incredibly well-spoken guy (head of the Washington Bureau of The New York Times; I'd expect smart) who was explaining the what the brand-new libor scandal was - apparently, banks are fixing and also betting on interest rates, and it's a real bad thing. (Funny, I expect to make this into a book, which means time will have passed, and that sentence will trigger a reaction somewhere between "What? I don't remember libor anything" or "THAT thing that started the revolution" - who knows?). Anyway, I am just hearing about it now.
Stephen started by asking, so how bad is this thing? The scandal and concept is new, so he was trying to find some common ground. "There's good, and there's bad - it's clear, right? There's cupcakes - good - and, you know, terrorists - bad. Which is this? Cupcakes or terrorism?"
The libor thing turned out to be bad ("Bad: it's closer to terrorism," the smart well-spoken guy said), but I was far more interested in the scale that Stephen came up with: cupcakes or terrorism? It points out the usefulness, sometimes, of putting forth a broad scale when trying to communicate with someone, or understand something. I have people in my life who tend to try be as accurate and exacting as possible when providing information, when all I need is a rough idea - they hem and haw over particulars, and so I will jump in and give them an idea of scale: this is what I am looking for. My example could be anything, from finding out the last time someone had sex to the how long they were married.
"So how long was that?"
"Um...I don't know...let's see...it was...last...no, wait...it was two..."
"Was it days, weeks, months, years?"
"Oh, it was years."
See, there you are. That gets me in the ballpark, and often tells me all I need to know. You can do it with lots of things: do you mean 10, 100, 1000? The third choice is important. People might not know if it's in the 10's or 100's, but they aren't going to get 10 mixed up with 1,000. It's never like...um, let me see, was that 10 or 1,000? Even when you think you have no idea, you DO have an idea, you just need to scale up (or down).
That's all I have to say about that - it's a useful tool, and you can even use Stephen's Cupcakes and Terrorism scale, if you like. I'm going to.
Battlestar Galactica: the Original Series: so bad it's good
I've been watching the old BSG, and it's - well, kind of B-quality in many way, and yet quite charming, usually inadvertently so. I loved, loved it when I was a kid, but it's not - you know, I liked The Love Boat too, is my point. Original BSG can pretty hilarious when it's not trying to be, but then it kind of IS. Starbuck - my favorite character back then (in the old show, for sure; also pretty fracking incredible in the new one, too) - is certainly playing things on the edge of tongue in cheek; his wink wink nudge nudge is part of who he is, but it gives the show this certain flavor it really needs to be worth watching.
That's because there are SO many silly things. The planet that's inexplicably just like the Old West, in which Apollo has a show down shoot out in the street with a cylon - a cylon who waits for him to draw. So absurd! And yet, in the very next episode, Starbuck is in this fantastic tight velveteen dark maroon outfit that is sort of like a Colonial Warrior's uniform but sexier and cooler (he's undercover). Yes, cooler. I admit it, he looked good, stylish in a way you just don't expect - I mean, tight purplish velveteen is a hard look for a straight man to pull off but he does. Tight, knee high black boots, big late 70's blaster, shaggy Skywalker haircut - it was not a bad look. I feel weird admitting it, but I found it true: not a bad look at all.
The particular episode I have on now - it's good background TV for blogging, I hate to admit - is really lame. It's so boring I remember it from my childhood - and I remember how boring it was even then. The show was supposed to be top end, in terms of special effects and production, but they must not have had much money, because they have to use the same shots OVER and OVER again. I mean, everyone who watched the show can remember those few battle scenes - the viper launch is the same, dozens of times, sometimes, per show - and this one is a TWO parter, even more prone to stock footage overload. You know it's not good when the voice over (Lorne Greene, no less) has to say "And now, the exciting conclusion." It can't be too exciting if they have to tell you so.
So even though sometimes you can't believe they are showing you the SAME shot again, still - you forgive it. Because it had an amazing story, and scenes with really interesting dramatic moments, things that blew my little eight year old mind. It had these concepts and I was new to thinking about concepts, about fascinating hypotheticals. What if Starbuck and Apollo and Sheba died but then came back to life? How happy would you be to be alive again! Or to see someone come back from the dead? In those stylish white uniforms, no less - I was captivated.
And also, let's face it, it was good because this time they are on a planet of clones, all wearing these silly beige overall outfits with orange stripes with 70's newsboy caps, which look gay on the bearded clone men, but cute on the blond clone women who all have sexy indiscriminately European accents. Naturally, Starbuck must once again change his clothes, and his umkempt shaggy hair looks terribly good under that newsboy cap. He's got a winning smile, bright eyes and - hell, I'll say it - a pretty nice ass. They knew what they were doing with those costume changes, so I'm hooked, even if I never want to see another close up of a thumb pressing a "fire" button on a viper joystick, ever again.
I also like that the cylons in this old show - the machine ones - have a sort of Spock or Data-like straight man sensibility. There's one stranded on a planet - the Old West one - and he shows up to make inquires; he heard a noise from far away, so now he's questioning the farmers. "We heard it but it sounded like it came from town," the farmers said. "In town, it sounded like it came from out here," the cylon humorlessly replies, but in that robotic voice, it was just so deadpan, it was hilarious. Maybe you had to be there.
My point being, I like when things have a mix of good & bad; they sort of need to. The new BSG is good - not just good, but great. It's theater - a show of quality so high it shouldn't even be called TV, and yet it was tough to watch stuff, because it was dark, dark as hell, and serious, serious as a heart attack, and sometimes I avoided watching the show just because life is hard enough and to watch these people just suffer - I mean, my God! The old show has the same premise as the new one - fleeing from a cylon attack, the last few ships full of the last few humans (maybe?), on the run, precious little resources, etc. Bleak in premise, but the original was light in tone. The new show has grit; the old one did not.
So the "bad" part that came along with the good was of a different order - but still, you gotta take the whole thing in. I'll watch some lame laser blasts repeadedly if I get Starbuck in snug space suits, and I'll suffer through executions, madness and grief if I get joy, illumination and hope. You can see that the scale is different, the context different, but the basic balance in the shows is about the same. It's just that one is fluffy with buried nuggets of great ideas, and the other has gravitas, which is the opposite of fluff.
I'm happy to know them both. The fact that the same characters appear in both is interesting because, amazingly, they are consistent. Starbuck goes from man to woman and yet remains the same; Colonel Tigh is as exasperated as ever. HOW they managed to bring weight and depth to the same story and characters is a true feat, and actually inspires me. It makes me really feel anything can be good. It hardly matters what you chose, if you put your heart and soul into it. I mean, I'm not recommending "Springtime for Hitler," the famous fictional play that is the crux of the Producer's wild Mel Brooks plot - some things are just too hard to pull off (Hitler, especially - he was so bad it will basically always be: "Too soon?").
But most things can be made cool, can be made excellent, even when they are ridiculous. After all, I'm the person remembered for her bellydance routine to Tom Jones singing "Motherless Child" with Portishead. I think I described the concept to someone ahead of time, and they were pretty skeptical. It seems like it would not work at all, and yet it was a hit. Years later, I ran into a woman at a music and dance camp who did not know me at all but came up and said, "I think I saw you once belly dance to a Tom Jones song at Sacred Space and it was amazing."
Apprently, people remember the things that almost go badly but then go well more than they remember the things that start well, go well, and end well.
Battlestar Galactica took risks with that tight velvet suit, and gosh darnit, it's a bigger payoff that those safe beige military uniforms even chubby Jolly looked OK in. Let that be a lesson to us all: fortune favors the bold.
I've been really entertained recently by certain things I've heard or watched. Most recently, I was watching The Colbert Report, and he had on this incredibly well-spoken guy (head of the Washington Bureau of The New York Times; I'd expect smart) who was explaining the what the brand-new libor scandal was - apparently, banks are fixing and also betting on interest rates, and it's a real bad thing. (Funny, I expect to make this into a book, which means time will have passed, and that sentence will trigger a reaction somewhere between "What? I don't remember libor anything" or "THAT thing that started the revolution" - who knows?). Anyway, I am just hearing about it now.
Stephen started by asking, so how bad is this thing? The scandal and concept is new, so he was trying to find some common ground. "There's good, and there's bad - it's clear, right? There's cupcakes - good - and, you know, terrorists - bad. Which is this? Cupcakes or terrorism?"
The libor thing turned out to be bad ("Bad: it's closer to terrorism," the smart well-spoken guy said), but I was far more interested in the scale that Stephen came up with: cupcakes or terrorism? It points out the usefulness, sometimes, of putting forth a broad scale when trying to communicate with someone, or understand something. I have people in my life who tend to try be as accurate and exacting as possible when providing information, when all I need is a rough idea - they hem and haw over particulars, and so I will jump in and give them an idea of scale: this is what I am looking for. My example could be anything, from finding out the last time someone had sex to the how long they were married.
"So how long was that?"
"Um...I don't know...let's see...it was...last...no, wait...it was two..."
"Was it days, weeks, months, years?"
"Oh, it was years."
See, there you are. That gets me in the ballpark, and often tells me all I need to know. You can do it with lots of things: do you mean 10, 100, 1000? The third choice is important. People might not know if it's in the 10's or 100's, but they aren't going to get 10 mixed up with 1,000. It's never like...um, let me see, was that 10 or 1,000? Even when you think you have no idea, you DO have an idea, you just need to scale up (or down).
That's all I have to say about that - it's a useful tool, and you can even use Stephen's Cupcakes and Terrorism scale, if you like. I'm going to.
Battlestar Galactica: the Original Series: so bad it's good
I've been watching the old BSG, and it's - well, kind of B-quality in many way, and yet quite charming, usually inadvertently so. I loved, loved it when I was a kid, but it's not - you know, I liked The Love Boat too, is my point. Original BSG can pretty hilarious when it's not trying to be, but then it kind of IS. Starbuck - my favorite character back then (in the old show, for sure; also pretty fracking incredible in the new one, too) - is certainly playing things on the edge of tongue in cheek; his wink wink nudge nudge is part of who he is, but it gives the show this certain flavor it really needs to be worth watching.
That's because there are SO many silly things. The planet that's inexplicably just like the Old West, in which Apollo has a show down shoot out in the street with a cylon - a cylon who waits for him to draw. So absurd! And yet, in the very next episode, Starbuck is in this fantastic tight velveteen dark maroon outfit that is sort of like a Colonial Warrior's uniform but sexier and cooler (he's undercover). Yes, cooler. I admit it, he looked good, stylish in a way you just don't expect - I mean, tight purplish velveteen is a hard look for a straight man to pull off but he does. Tight, knee high black boots, big late 70's blaster, shaggy Skywalker haircut - it was not a bad look. I feel weird admitting it, but I found it true: not a bad look at all.
The particular episode I have on now - it's good background TV for blogging, I hate to admit - is really lame. It's so boring I remember it from my childhood - and I remember how boring it was even then. The show was supposed to be top end, in terms of special effects and production, but they must not have had much money, because they have to use the same shots OVER and OVER again. I mean, everyone who watched the show can remember those few battle scenes - the viper launch is the same, dozens of times, sometimes, per show - and this one is a TWO parter, even more prone to stock footage overload. You know it's not good when the voice over (Lorne Greene, no less) has to say "And now, the exciting conclusion." It can't be too exciting if they have to tell you so.
So even though sometimes you can't believe they are showing you the SAME shot again, still - you forgive it. Because it had an amazing story, and scenes with really interesting dramatic moments, things that blew my little eight year old mind. It had these concepts and I was new to thinking about concepts, about fascinating hypotheticals. What if Starbuck and Apollo and Sheba died but then came back to life? How happy would you be to be alive again! Or to see someone come back from the dead? In those stylish white uniforms, no less - I was captivated.
And also, let's face it, it was good because this time they are on a planet of clones, all wearing these silly beige overall outfits with orange stripes with 70's newsboy caps, which look gay on the bearded clone men, but cute on the blond clone women who all have sexy indiscriminately European accents. Naturally, Starbuck must once again change his clothes, and his umkempt shaggy hair looks terribly good under that newsboy cap. He's got a winning smile, bright eyes and - hell, I'll say it - a pretty nice ass. They knew what they were doing with those costume changes, so I'm hooked, even if I never want to see another close up of a thumb pressing a "fire" button on a viper joystick, ever again.
I also like that the cylons in this old show - the machine ones - have a sort of Spock or Data-like straight man sensibility. There's one stranded on a planet - the Old West one - and he shows up to make inquires; he heard a noise from far away, so now he's questioning the farmers. "We heard it but it sounded like it came from town," the farmers said. "In town, it sounded like it came from out here," the cylon humorlessly replies, but in that robotic voice, it was just so deadpan, it was hilarious. Maybe you had to be there.
My point being, I like when things have a mix of good & bad; they sort of need to. The new BSG is good - not just good, but great. It's theater - a show of quality so high it shouldn't even be called TV, and yet it was tough to watch stuff, because it was dark, dark as hell, and serious, serious as a heart attack, and sometimes I avoided watching the show just because life is hard enough and to watch these people just suffer - I mean, my God! The old show has the same premise as the new one - fleeing from a cylon attack, the last few ships full of the last few humans (maybe?), on the run, precious little resources, etc. Bleak in premise, but the original was light in tone. The new show has grit; the old one did not.
So the "bad" part that came along with the good was of a different order - but still, you gotta take the whole thing in. I'll watch some lame laser blasts repeadedly if I get Starbuck in snug space suits, and I'll suffer through executions, madness and grief if I get joy, illumination and hope. You can see that the scale is different, the context different, but the basic balance in the shows is about the same. It's just that one is fluffy with buried nuggets of great ideas, and the other has gravitas, which is the opposite of fluff.
I'm happy to know them both. The fact that the same characters appear in both is interesting because, amazingly, they are consistent. Starbuck goes from man to woman and yet remains the same; Colonel Tigh is as exasperated as ever. HOW they managed to bring weight and depth to the same story and characters is a true feat, and actually inspires me. It makes me really feel anything can be good. It hardly matters what you chose, if you put your heart and soul into it. I mean, I'm not recommending "Springtime for Hitler," the famous fictional play that is the crux of the Producer's wild Mel Brooks plot - some things are just too hard to pull off (Hitler, especially - he was so bad it will basically always be: "Too soon?").
But most things can be made cool, can be made excellent, even when they are ridiculous. After all, I'm the person remembered for her bellydance routine to Tom Jones singing "Motherless Child" with Portishead. I think I described the concept to someone ahead of time, and they were pretty skeptical. It seems like it would not work at all, and yet it was a hit. Years later, I ran into a woman at a music and dance camp who did not know me at all but came up and said, "I think I saw you once belly dance to a Tom Jones song at Sacred Space and it was amazing."
Apprently, people remember the things that almost go badly but then go well more than they remember the things that start well, go well, and end well.
Battlestar Galactica took risks with that tight velvet suit, and gosh darnit, it's a bigger payoff that those safe beige military uniforms even chubby Jolly looked OK in. Let that be a lesson to us all: fortune favors the bold.
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