The best show in TV: Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica is the best show in TV right now. Period.

Wait a second. Sit down. It is not my geek side taking over the good taste and snobbery circuits of my brain, clouding my good judgment at the sight of awesome spaceships and Tricia Helfer. When I say that a show is really that good I mean it; spaceships and murderous sexy robots that like to have hot robot sex with humans aside, Galactica (2K version) it is a fantastic show.

The show shares basically two things with its 1970s predecessor: the premise (last vestiges of the human race on the run after almost completely annihilated by Cylons) and some of the character names. Besides that, it is a completely different show; dark, brooding, gritty, intense and just plain awesome.

It is one of those rare cases that you see a show begin with a good idea and push it way beyond you could ever imagine; Galactica has seen episodes dealing with patriotism, balancing freedom and security, faith, torture, treason, politics, duty, trade unions, trust, friendship, love and pretty much anything you can imagine. The characters in Galactica are not "good" or "bad" they are real, frail, weak human beings / awesomely hot robots trying to cope with unthinkable horrors and very hard choices, and trying to do their best when dealing with them. Treason, failure, fear, heroism, fanaticism, anger, faith is not just a matter of doing the right thing or failing; what is a right and what is wrong is sometimes very hard to say.

I don't want to spoil any plotlines (see bellow), but when a trial against a major character had me seriously having doubts and making me reconsider what treason is and what it means you know a show is into something.

It is actually pretty unbelievable that a show this good has been so ignored come award season. As usual, pointy headed critics are too serious and deep to even come to consider a SciFi / genre show for anything besides visual effects (see also: The Dark Knight Returns, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), something that seriously drives me nuts.

Believe me, I know a good show when I see it. I workship all the right altars. I am one of the cool kids. And Galactica is up there with the Sopranos, the Wire, Mad Men, the West Wing and whatever high brown show of your choice in terms of sheer awesome.

Stop ruining my shows!

Very small, yet very heartfelt, rant against the Bible (Entertainment Weekly): stop ruining my shows.

Sometimes, we love waiting for the DVD box set when watching some shows. Sometimes we just discover an awesome show a bit late, and we are furiously Netflixing (yup, it is a verb now) past seasons to catch up. Sometimes we DVR the show with our genuinely awesome franken-DVR that I put together with my very own hands. Sometimes we are just not watching a show just yet, and we will get to watch it some day in a not too distant future. We usually unwrap the box set in less than two years after we got it -hello, Friday Night Lights- but we will get down to it.

Dear prophets in EW: stop fucking spoiling shows in your magazine and website over and over again. We are trying to get to watch the simply legendary, absolutely awesome, insanely cool Battlestar Galactica on DVD, and it has basically been impossible to get the last episodes in true unspoiled, virginal form. Right now those fuckers have a big ass spoiler in the front page of their website, top right, boxed; it is the first place your eyes land on. They have spoiled massively important plot points in photograph captions in the magazine, season previews, season reviews and even on DVD box set reviews.

It is an awesome show, and believe me, we will still watch our last season 4.0 DVD before catching up with the episodes on DVR and watch the finale at the same time as everyone else. But still, dude. Seriously, you had to spoil all those Cylons in a fucking caption? Seriously?

I blame Phil Collins.

If only more celebrities would get fat!

This lovely lady to my left is Jessica Simpson. Ms. Simpson is a celebrity (to a degree). When she started her career she looked like every other Blond Disney Jail Bait Newbie singer: probably a size 2 or 4, unassuming bland styling, "natural" looking (5 pounds of) makeup. Then C-list Jessica made a little reality show with her then B-list husband, Nick Lachey, and a moronic A-lister was born!

Ms. Simpson is not very smart. She can certainly hit high notes but honestly... only dogs enjoy the sound she makes when she gets there. As a woman she makes me kind of sad, really. However I did appreciate that she was willing to be herself (aka a brainless girly girl) on national television without shame. And I can guarantee you that she laughed all the way to the bank (leaving all the MENSA folks in the dust.)

Then the girl had to go all Hollywood...She gets the Daisy Duke gig and starts working out two hours a day. She stops eating her Dominoes, Chicken of the Sea and buffalo wings. Her size 4 turns into a 0. Her ribs start showing, like the creepy picture above. Her boobs pull a "shrinky dink" but her head seems to grow larger. She starts getting the Giada Deluarentis "meatball on a toothpick" look.

Lucky for us after a while her star begins to fade. She divorces the now D-list Nick Lachey. She starts dating Tony Romo and gets blamed for the Cowboys losing streak. She attempts and fails to break into the country music industry. All of this leads her to eat like a normal human being again. She has no tent pole summer movie to skinny up for. Instead she has the chili cook off at the local fair to judge for!!!!

Here is the Jessica Simpson I sorely missed! The "I don't give a flying fuck what y'all think about me - I'll be dumb if I wanna!" Jessica. Yet she gets lambasted in the entertainment press for being FAT! FAT!!!!!! Are they kidding me???

That is the thing that kills me about the huge amount of press that these so called "fat" pictures are getting. Dude....seriously.....she is still frakkin skinny. If you had a picture of her in this (not so flattering - ok pretty damn ugg) outfit standing next to someone like me you would never ever ever say that she is fat. I would look like the Stay Puff marshmallow man next to her. At the most she is a size 4 now. But when you get so uber-skinny like she did any bit of weight you put on makes it seem like you are on a binge with Oprah.

I have a major plea for Hollywood....GAIN SOME WEIGHT PEOPLE! Eat like normal humans and have some damn curves. Stop looking like plastic dolls!!! Perfection is so unbelievably boring! Boobs are wonderful! Asses are wonderful!!!! Shake your money maker Jessica. Shake it loud and proud!!!!

Joaquin: pulling a Rourke

Now that Mr. Rourke came back from the death with the awesome double punch of Sin City and The Wrestler, it looks like Joaquín Phoenix wants to follow him in the opposite direction. This time is retiring from acting to begin a career as... rap singer?

I won´t be the first to say that this might be more of a pulling an Andy Kauffman than a true Rourkian move, and the whole thing is a big joke to mess with Perez Hilton´s hairdo. In any case, if it is a fake, it is simply awesome.

Crushing souls, one bone at a time

We are really, really, really behind in Oscar movie watching, so forgive me if this comment is oh-so-2008. Anyway, we watched The Wrestler this evening, and yes, it is indeed very good movie. Great, even, perhaps even a masterpiece. I really can´t tell right now. The film is so fucking depressing, so soul crushingly painful, so saddening, so desperately sad that I can barely gather the strength to write about it.

Holy Christ, is the Wrestler brutal. It definetely takes out all those little good feelings and hope and fuzzy little memories of teddy bears and kittens and babies that you have in your little soul, brings them to a dark, back alley, and fucking kicks their asses and suplexes and bodyslams them into a pulp until the only thing you want to do is go to a corner and cry, as your only remaining memories involve creepy clowns and roadkill.

In any case, yes, Rourke is great; he was born to play this role. The two unsung heroes of the movie, however are Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei, who are absolutely wonderful. Well, in Tomei´s case she not only is wonderful but actually really, really hot. And not that unsung, either; she got her Oscar nod.

To sum up: yes, the movie is really worth watching. Get ready to some hardcore desperation and hopelesness, in any case; althought considering the director´s filmography, this is Aranofsky most uplifting film.

Greetings from The General. "Hello Blogosphere!!"

Well, I am finally getting involved in all of this blob shit. I never understood why people get into this blog stuff, but once I read a few it occurred to me that blogs and I will get along quite well. When asked to contribute to this "Dump" I agreed without hesitation. The next day, however, I realized I have nothing to say to any of you fuckers. And even more troubling is the fact that I am a computer moron and I rarely check my dang email.

My fears were laid to rest with a suggestion from one of my roommates. He suggested that I go to bars and blog about my experiences. This idea was so simple, yet, so profound!!! Instantly I began crafting rules and regulations for my future excursions. It will be New Haven bars, ALL OF THEM!! And I shall write the names of these bars on scraps of paper, all of witch will be placed into a basket. And it will be from this basket that the name of a bar will be selected. I will travel to the selected bar and I will have no less than two beverages. I will blog my bloggings and tell tales both grim and fine. Anyway y'all get the picture right.

I'm just gonna do what I do best, except now I'm gonna document my experiences. I plan on focusing on the overall atmosphere of the establishment and whether or not I enjoyed myself. I will not get into details on how good food was or any of that shit. I plan on sticking to what I know, and I fuckin know bars. I must say, I am a little nervous about the thought of going to some of the sketchier places. Fuck it though. If I'm gonna blog I might as well go all the way.

As it turns out,I'm sick at the present time so I need some time to rest before I hit the pubs. I need to compile a list of bars anyway. So hold tight fuckers, The General will be out on the town before you know it.

peace
The General

Deep, brief thought

Kristen Wiig is the best thing that has happened to Saturday Night Live since... well, in a long time.

I have a bit of a crush on her.

A little bit.