Some damn fool once told Hayden Christenson he can act. And that cute kid from Billy Elliot ain’t aging well. But the jumping is neat.

This was on sale in the produce section of the C-Town supermarket on Broadway at 207th Street.

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Four hour movies should be illegal. Mary McDonnell is my jesus now. Lovely scenery; solid music, competent-if-unremarkable directing. Also? White people are evil.

I admit it, I’m nervous. All this mutinous talk, all this anger and violence about to break into the open… especially since it’s aimed at our dearly beloved Admiral Adama. We know some ill shit is on its way. We know that Gaeta stands at the center of it. We know he’s working with Zarek, and Zarek has no problem using violence in the service of his political goals.

But I’m embracing the moment. I’m welcoming what comes next. Even if it’s heartbreaking. Because this whole terrifying wrap-up shows two phenomenal things about the storytelling skills of the BSG creative team.

1. Even the most horrible acts make sense. When characters do dreadful things, it jives with what we know about them… so no matter what kind of self-destructive nonsense Starbuck gets up to, we don’t love her any less. In “Sometimes a Great Notion,” Dee’s pivotal act hits us in the gut and we can’t really breathe for a bit… but it makes sense. Looking back, it can be traced through every single Dualla scene, from the miniseries… she has always been the emblem of hope and optimism, and how better to draw the fleet’s despair… how better to bring home the pain of having hope snatched out from under you? And after all this fleet has been through, to now see some supposed cylon allies calling the shots… it makes sense that people would be angry. Angry enough to do some terrible terrible things.

2. After drawing such wonderful characters, after making us fall in love with all their quirks and flaws and awesomenesses (yeah, it’s a word)… BSG is not afraid to fling them down to the depths of hell. That’s how we really learn what they’re made of. That’s how we are transformed with them. We’ve never seen Bill pushed past his comfort zone, not for longer than a few minutes, like when he thinks Starbuck is dead or finds out someone he loves is a cylon. So… yes, please, Gaeta. Bring the pain. We’ve watched this world built up piece by piece, like a marvelous sand castle, and it’s silly to expect a resolution that leaves everything pretty and nice and happy. The big wave always comes.

“Batter my soul,” said the great english poet John Donne, in a poem addressed to God. Isn’t that the mark of true faith? To accept the ugly things fate sends our way? To willingly submit oneself to the whims and demands of an unseen authority, knowing that the spiritual and emotional satisfaction will far outweigh the pain of loss and submission? That’s how I feel when I watch BSG, and I don’t even believe in god(s).

OMG, this movie was actually pretty good! Sexy bondage werewolves; Bill Nighy saying “magnanimity;” oppressed people rising up against uptight European vampires…

There’s a lot of excellent actors on Battlestar Galactica, but one of the very best is Michael Hogan’s left eye. The little bugger can emote better than the combined casts of every Fox drama ever.

Today’s question: who would win in a celebrity death match between Saul Tigh’s eye and the Smoke Monster from LOST?

Watching Lost last night, after the initial euphoria died down, I realize - I don’t trust these people. I love the show a ton, I really do, but there’s something about Lost that makes me feel like the producers are used car salesmen trying to rush me through a shiny showroom so I won’t notice how flimsy and cheap all the merchandise is.

Faraday says ‘we have to to the hatch,’ Sawyer etc follows him, the forward motion of it carries us through to the next act, Sawyer gets to scowl and be shirtless and say ‘you better tell me what’s going on,’ etc, but when they get to the hatch… nothing. Faraday does not learn anything he didn’t already know, there’s no supplies to be found, and it’s only as a major incidental afterthought that Faraday tries to confront Desmond. The whole thing was just a narrative tool to create some drama, and did not develop naturally out of the story and the characters.

I don’t mind being tricked, or sucker-punched, or shocked, or heartbroken, or spending a long time scratching my head going “wha????!?” …… as long as I trust that the writers & producers are treating me with respect and assuming I’m smart enough to scrutinize every little thing. I watch Lost for the big picture story, and the questions it raises about the meaning of life and identity, and the dilemmas each character faces, and even the characters themselves, although I generally think they’re ridiculous and unappealing. But watching the premiere of season five right after the premiere of BSG’s season 4.5 brought into stark relief the reasons I trust the BSG folks so much more. Even when Galactica sucker-punches me, it makes perfect sense. When the fifth cylon was revealed, it came out of left field in a way no one had ever imagined, but I trusted that the producers were going to make it all make perfect sense.

I’ve never felt like the creative team behind LOST had any endgame in mind, and that their overall goal has always been to keep the show going for as long as possible by making sh*t as complicated as possible, raising more questions than can ever be answered. BSG is so tight that it’s hard to find a wasted word, let alone a wasted episode or character or big-picture question.

Then again, it’s probably unfair for me to compare any show to BSG. There’s simply nothing else on television that comes close.

There’s a dog with an upside down head; that’s pretty neat; otherwise the movie’s Unwatchable. I wish I could Unsee the Unborn.

Whenever Juancy and I watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica, we tend to hit pause every two minutes to discuss/process/theorize. As an indicator of how compelling an episode last night’s Sometimes a Great Notion was - we were pretty much speechless from start to finish (except of course for exclamations of shock, sadness, horror, and utter confusion).

There’s so much to say, but for right now I just wanna talk about one thing. My favorite character, who got very little screen time in this ep but still managed to project enough pain and sadness to hold her own against so many massive displays of pain and sadness. Laura Roslin.

Poor Roslin. Last night, she finally had the breakdown that she has never allowed herself to have, going back to the initial attack, because she was immediately thrust into the role of president and had to focus all her energy on keeping morale up, giving the people hope, keeping the comforting wheels of government bureaucracy turning. She never got to grieve for all the things she lost, or mourn her murdered loved ones, because she had to heal everyone else’s grief by giving them something to believe in. Something called Earth. Now that Earth has been reached, and instead of the answer to their prayers it turns out to be one more horrific nightmare, she is confronted once more by The People, demanding that she make everything okay, and she breaks. Finally, the superhuman mask of The President cracks, and she let’s herself feel all the pain and bewilderment she could never afford before.

But I don’t think she’ll be down for long. Society is crumbling, crime and violence and despair are spreading, and she is going to have to sort out that sh*t By Any Means Necessary….

My sister was in the audience for the Rachael Ray Show this week, and everybody got a box of these semi-freaky Obama cookies…

This BSG poster is up all over the city. Is it just me, or is that a resurrection tub/goo bath reflected in Roslin’s eye? …

The phenomenal GALACTICA SITREP has published an original essay of mine, entitled “The Eyeglasses of Laura Roslin,” a silly rhapsody about the way the re-imagined BSG uses this simple prop to deepen our understanding of the character played by Mary McDonnell:

“The Eyeglasses of Laura Roslin”

WARNING - this is for hardcore Battlestar Galactica fans only! Other readers are likely to be bored senseless…

Yep, that’s right… somebody figured that my name and my thoughts would induce somebody to buy something! It’s very exciting… Now I just gotta figure out how to put it on a resume/CV…

A People's History of Poverty in America, by Stephen Pimpare - front cover

A Peoples History of Poverty in America, by Stephen Pimpare - back cover

A Peoples History of Poverty in America, by Stephen Pimpare - close up of my blurb, yes that's me, that's my words...

A People's History of Poverty in America, by Stephen Pimpare - spine

My sister noticed this awesome tag at the West Fourth Street subway stop, visible from the uptown A train platform.

As I try to figure out what my own blog is all about, I’ll be doing occasional Random Blog Love postings where I call out some fabulous blog. In the spirit of transparency, yknow, so everybody knows who I’m ripping off.

Today’s Random Blog Love goes out to:

My New Plaid Pants

which bills itself as “Nonsense Incarnate,” but which seems to me to have a very thorough theoretical underpinning and a rigorous aesthetic applied consistently throughout. That is to say: love of horror films, love of shirtless boys, love of Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Phillipe with or without shirts, love of Battlestar Galactica, and a solid cinema studies background. All of which I echo. I also really dig JA’s regular features, such as “Thursday’s Way Not To Die” (which examines a particularly brutal movie death in glorious screen-capture detail (”A Trip To The Old Wood Chipper,” “High-Heeled to Death by a Girlfriend Impersonator”)); and “The Moment I Fell For…”

I just love it.