Battlestar Galactica 2.3 Fragged aka Baltar Becomes a Man

1. Okay...so Tricia Hefler has on a pea coat. It must be cold in Vancouver um I mean Kobol. But what does Six need a coat for? She doesn't get cold. She's all in Baltar's head. Or is she?

2. Boy those Cylons are smart! Building a missle battery out of parts from their ship. They're like Macgyver.

3. I see Dr. Cottle doesn't adhere by that antiquated medical policy of not smoking in the surgery room.

4. Yeah Tigh's off the wagon...and on the side of the road...laying in the gutter...holding a tin cup.

5. "Why aren't you in the brig?"
"Um cause nobody put me there."

"Why aren't *you* in the brig?"

Gotta love that old drunk Tigh!

6. Madam President is losing it.

7. I see Lady MacBeth has reared her duplicitous face. She's still no Sherry Palmer. But she's giving it the old college try though.

8. Callie: "I just joined to pay for dentist school."

9. I think Crash had good reason to take out the missile but he should have recognized there's no way they could've taken it down with the personel they had.

10. Ha! Baltar the voice of reason! Chief knows Baltar is right but it's the military. They can't vote on things. Gotta go with the chain of command, no matter how foolhardy it is.

11. This brotha is all about the faith. He's from Gemenon. And so is the black woman representative on the Quorum of 12. So Gemenon is a black planet huh?

12. How does Tigh's wife have access to the President anyway? That's a tight ship he's running there.

13. I love "D"! "Let the record reflect that the witness made the drinky drinky sign" (c) High Nasal Voice Lawyer on the Simpsons

14. Callie is not going. That girl is not moving for nothin'! I can't believe Crashdown pulled a gun on her.

15. Baltar is that G!

16. Those Cylons are no joke. Although sometimes it seems they went to the same shooting school as C.O.B.R.A. soldiers.

17. Wow. That backfired on ya Saul. Didn't it?

18. See? That's they way this "assault" on the Cylons was supposed to end. In Star Trek, the ragtag group of enlisted mechanics would have taken them down. Here? Those same mechanics gain common sense and refuse a suicide mission like that.

19. Martial Law. I'm not surprised. It was coming sooner or later.

20. Oh yeah, the fact that you didn't know who was going to live in this episode was great. This show is like the Buffy/Angel universe well anyone is expendable outside of the core characters. Chief, Seelix, Callie, Crashdown. I wouldn't have been surprised to see anyone of them die. That's great. It keeps you tense. It keeps you guessing. And it makes for great television.

Grade
A-
This episode was better to me than last week's. However ( (c) Stephen A. Smith ), there was NO Helo, Starbuck, Caprica Boomer or Galactica Boomer! Awww man. I wanted to know what was up with her stealing the ship. I guess technically it would be repossession since it belonged to the Cylons in the first place. Hopefully next week's episode of "Three's Company" won't be preempted. But I digress. Why do people continue to sleep on this show. It's got action, suspense, drama, and for the snobs: theological and philosphical discussions.

Weirdos, Freaks and Me: Stephen B's Adventures at the Comic-Con Day 2

So I finally arrived at the convention center around 12:30pm. I went with my wife, Ursula, and a couple of her friends, Juan and Marsha. There were mad folks out there on Saturday. That's the day the regular folks (i.e. not fan boys) go to the comic con to check out all the fuss so there was an amazing amount of traffic and nowhere to park. Plus the Padres game was that same night so it was really packed. When I got there, we walked around on the convention floor for a while. I was able to score some free Hasbro Star Wars figures for my nephew. They just love giving out free stuff at this thing. It was too late to see the Aeon Flux panel so I set my sights on the Serenity panel. Serenity is the movie based on the Fox TV show Firefly .

After waiting 40 minutes in line to get into Hall H. (Kevin Smith was speaking in the hall before "Serenity" so it took a while before we got in.) That's the largest hall in the convention center and holds 6,500 people. I finally got into the Serenity panel. But first we were treated to footage from some crappy movie called "Slither" from that legendary auteur, James Gunn of "Tromeo and Juliety" fame. This movie stars Nathan Fillion from Firefly, Serenity, and Buffy. The entire cast came out and they showed footage of this film about a small town that's infected with some kind of creatures that turns everyone into mutants/zombies/whatever. It truly looked bad and was as low budget as you can get. When Michael Rooker is the biggest name in your movie, you got a problem. Anyway, I think the only reason this panel was part of the "Serenity" panel was as a favor to the director because Nathan Fillion was in both movies. There was *no* reason that schlock like that would be in the largest hall that was devoted to previews for big budget films like "V is for Vendetta, Harry Potter 4, Aeon Flux, The Corpse Bride, and Doom.

Anyway, after the cast of "Slither" left, the cast of Serenity came out. All were there minus Alan Tudyk. Gina was looking luscious as usual. Honestly, I didn't enjoy this panel as much as I hoped I would. They showed a scene from the movie of "Summer" beating up folks in a bar, but that was the only interesting part. The panel consisted of the cast joking around the entire time and Joss Whedon not seriously answering any questions. The one good thing that came from it was how appreciative the cast was to the fans stating that the support of the fans is the only reason the movie was made. The cast mentioned that several times. I cut out of the early because I was hoping to find some interesting sites on the floor. Alas I was dissapointed.


The best thing to come out of my time on the floor was my wife being able to get an autograph from Bill Amend (creator of FoxTrot comic strip). She's a huge fan of the strip. I could have gone back up to Hall H for the Sony panel featuring Underworld/and The Fog, but I had no desire to stand in line for another 40 minutes.

So the rest of my time was spent wandering around. Many "celebrities" come to comic-con to earn a little income by signing autographs and it's always depressing to see this. There's always those people are very popular and the line is 300 deep for autographs. Then there's people like "Virgil" from the WWF. I saw that brotha sitting at his booth looking bored and quite frankly, pitiful. No one was visiting his booth for an autograph and I felt so sorry for him. These people obviously need the money and I'm sure it costs them money to fly to San Diego, and stay in a hotel and when they're charging $10/$20 an autograph, they need a lot of autographs to make it worth their while. I wouldn't be surprised if many go home in the red.

I didn't really get to see much Saturday. After the headache of finding parking and dealing with the very large crowds I really didn't enjoy myself. Friday was a better day for me. The problem is, all the good stuff is scheduled at the same time. Friday had a bunch of stuff from 2 to 6pm that conflicted and you could only go to one at a time because of the time it takes to go from room to room and stand in line. Other times there's absolutely nothing going on and if you've already hit the convention floor you're left twiddling your thumbs.

Click HERE for Pictures!

Weirdos, Freaks and Me: Stephen B's Adventures at the Comic-Con Day 1

Me and Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder
Friday was my first day at the San Diego Comi-Con. I didn't go on Thursday the real day one. I'm not of a comic book fan. I am a fan of genre movies and television so all the events I visited were of that variety. I got to Comic Con around 11am. It opened at 10am but I was in no rush. I had a four day pass already so I quickly passed through the long line for door sales and got my badge quickly. The first thing I wanted to check out was the Warner Brothers prsentation which had previews of V for Vendetta, Harry Potter and The Corpse Bride. Unfortunately that line was forming *outside* and wrapped pretty far down the block. I wasn't interested in waiting in a long line, especially when it was flowing continuously. They kept stopping the line for some reason.

So I went to the Stan Lee presentation instead. He was there to talk about two of his new comics Mosaic and Condor I think and to answer questions from fans. Half of the questions were decent but some bordered on "Elite FanBoy". As always, there's that one idiot who wants to "get on" and asked if he would take a look at his portfolio. Dude, he doesn't have time for that. There are lot of people standing in line to answer legitimate questions and you're wasting everyone's time by trying to "get a deal". Half those people in there had a portfolio, but they had the class not to badger the man about looking at it and hooking you up with a job. Here's some interesting Tidbits from Stan Lee:

* Striperella Lives. He said that there's a company that is interested in making striperella DVD movies and other company is looking to have striperella episodes on cell phones.

* He doesn't really remember how he came up with the idea of Spiderman. Reporters and others always asked him how he came up with it and he couldn't remember so he always lies. He tells them he saw something crawling on the wall and imagined that a man who could crawl on walls would be a great character. He figures that sounds better to people who ask than the truth.

* His favorite Marvel Hero is The Thing. His favorite Villian is Dr. Doom. His favorite Marvel movies are Spiderman and Xmen.

* He doesn't take the changes made to his characters for the sake of motion pictures to heart. He feels that you gotta make changes (he mentioned the spiderman changes like the webshooters and the spider being genetically engineered in the movie rather than radioactive) to fit in the new format, i.e. films.

In the same room was pilot preview of the new WB series "Supernatural". It's a cross between X-Files, Kolchak the night stalker, and ghost busters. The show is about a family who's mother was killed by a poltergeist when the one son was an infant and the other was five years old. Her husband watched it happen and from that point on decided to hunt down whatever ghost killed his wife and trained his sons to be male "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" except with ghosts. Anyway, the pilot was okay. There was nothing really that made me want to watch the show, but it has some potential.

Next in the same room (I didn't have to leave my seat for three hours.) was the Veronica Mars panel. They showed a composite clip of everything that happened in the first season. I never watched the show but plan on getting the season 1 DVD when it drops in September. They then brought out the entire cast minus Kristen Bell (in Europe) and somebody else. Also on hand was uber producer Joel Silver and Charisma Carpenter of Buffy/Angel fame. It looks like she's joing the cast. She's at least in the first episode of the next season. Boy was she looking nice. Seriously, she had a bad spell when she was pregnant. She was not looking her best during that time. Especially in that ABC Family movie she was in. But she came out on point today! Anyway, during this panel there was a typical Comic Book Guy moment. This guy asked the producers, "In the flashbacks she has on a pendant. Then in three episodes of the present day scenes the pendant has a choker. Then in three episodes at the end of the first season she has on the pendant without the choker." Everybody started groaning when this guy asked that question. I'm like, WTF are you talking about? Why would you notice something like that? Anyway, I guess something of interest to Veronica Mars fans is that season 2 apparently will have a long murder story arc that lasts the whole season like in season 1.

Next, I went to the Aaron McGruder signing. He is the creator of The Boondocks comic strip. He was signing from 3 to 4pm with the Boondocks TV Show panel from 4 to 5. The TV show will debut October 2, 2005 on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. I wasn't able to stay for the panel so I was only able to get an autograph for my sister in law, who is a huge Boondocks fan, and a T-shirt. I got my picture taken with him and asked him about Reginald Hudlin's hiring as BET President of programming. He laughed it off and said that "Reggie is a very creative guy." Whatever that means.

After that, I was able to step into the Battlestar Galactica panel for about 20 minutes. Present were the producers, Mary McDonne (President Roslin), James Callis (Baltar), Jamie Bamber (Apollo), Grace Park (Sharon), and "Helo". Katee Sackoff was on her way or something. Jamie Bamber is very...British. He had a very strong accent. This was an entertaining panel for the short time I was there. It was mostly joking around amongst the cast. I had to leave after that.

Comic Book Conventions are definitely a geek's paradise. Tons of people walking around in costumes and loads of nerd speak. Overheard at the convention:

"I programmed Final Fantasy on my TI-89" (That's a calculator those not in the know)
Geek #1:"Stan Lee has charasma." Geek #2"Yeah, he has charasma." No, that's not a typo. They actually said CHARASMA!

I call them geeks but I must be one to some degree to have gone to this thing and post about it on an internet blog page. LOL!

Click HERE for Pictures!

Battlestar Galactica 2.1 Scattered

1. Let me get this out of the way right now. Gaeta is a Cylon. Evidence: In the miniseries, there was a Cylon transponder device placed on the bridge that Gaeta overlooked. How did he miss something so obviously not part of Galactica's equpiment. In episode "33" the Cylons jumped to where the fleet jumped every 33 minutes without fail. Gaeta was the one plotting those jumps. How did they find them so easily? In the season finale, right before Boomer shoots Adama, he goes over to shake her hand but it appears as though he hands her something. The gun perhaps? And in this episode, he conveniently forgot to relay the changed jump calculations to the rest of the fleet. Which forced them to go back in order to find the fleet. Because it was too risky too go back, Tigh was leaning towards not doing it...until Gaeta came up with an idea that allowed them to go back and stay for only 10 minutes. It required the use of a network, which they don't use on the Battlestar because the Cylons are computers and would be able to use it to access Galactica's systems. This had to be a ploy to get them back in order to have that ship with Cylon Centurions to infiltrate the ship. There you have it Gaeta is a Cylon.

2. Am I the only that knew that Tarn was going to get his. At least he didn't go back by himself.

3. These flashbacks of a "young" Adama and Tigh are a little annoying. Especially since EJO does *not* look any younger in them.

4. Oh Crap. What are Helo and Starbuck going to do now with no ride?

5. Crashdown doesn't know what he's doing. He will get everyone killed.

6. Where did this guy directly under Tigh come from? This dude popped up out of nowhere.

7. Tigh's wife is sooo Lady Macbeth. Her scheming is reminiscent of my girl Sherry Palmer. But nobody will be shadier than Sherry.

8. Grade: B Not much happened but Ronald Moore said that season 2 doesn't really begin until the 6th episode. I take that to mean that the first 6 episodes are a continuation of this story arc. Sounds like Season 6 of DS9 to me (Moore was an exec producer on DS9). With that long story arc after the federation left the station. I'm looking forward to this.

Emmy Nominations are In

11 nominations for Will and Grace ?!? I can't think of a more less deserving show. 15 for Desperate Housewives and 12 for Lost. There's something these stupid voters doe every year. They either jump on the bandwagon of a "buzz-worthy" new show (Desperate and Lost)a little too hard or they continue to nominate old stale shows because they don't watch anything new (Will and Grace). Or they give a show pity nominations because it's ending. It's rare that a show/actors finally gets nominated after being ignored for years but is *still* good enough to warrant said nomination like Scrubs.

At least it looks like they're looking for new blood in the best lead male actor in a drama. Too bad Anthony Anderson and Chiklis lost out. But my girl CCH Pounder finally got some recognition! She's not going to win though.

The Best Reality/Competition Category: Why don't they just rename this the Amazing Race Award? There is *not* a better reality show out there. I defy you to name one.

Snubs: Although some people thought this was a down year, I feel the Shield should have been nominated for best drama. Also The Wire and Battlestar Galactica (no effin' way this is going to happen). Anthony Anderson for the Shield.

It's not easy to become a lawyer in California

From a Website I found:

"The trick is: the California Bar Exam is known as the toughest in the nation (it's called an "exclusionary bar" because it's meant not just to measure competence, but also to regulate the number of lawyers who can practice in the state), so no matter what sort of school you've attended, you will be judged by the same ruthless standards as your accredited-school or non-accredited school peers. Simply put, it is NOT easy to become a lawyer in California, no matter what sort of school you choose."