I will submit an informal theory, which I will dub the Beavis and Butthead effect. Imagine, for a moment, an average anti-intellectual moron. We’ll call him (arbitrarily male, of course) “Jack.”

Jack goes to the movies. He sees, oh, say, Avatar. He comes away from it thinking it was crap. “Who are these people trying to fool?” he bellows. “This is the same plot as a bunch of other movies I’ve seen! Why, the acting wasn’t even that great!” Jack goes home, logs onto IMDB, and gives Avatar a 1 out of 10 rating. Somebody needs to put these Hollywood hacks in their place, after all.

Meanwhile, Jill (arbitrarily female), for all her differences of opinion, is very similar to Jack. Jill goes to see Avatar and she loves it. She finds the special effects dazzling; Pandora is so real to her that she felt she could reach out and touch it. She thinks to herself excitedly: “This is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time! Just look at all the stuff on the screen! Check out all the hidden messages!” Jill goes home, logs onto IMDB, and gives Avatar a 10 out of 10 rating. Surely this marvel, this wonder of a film, deserves to unseat stodgy old bores like The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. Why, those movies aren’t even relevant to today’s world.

You rarely see a Jack or a Jill go for the “5 out of 10″ rating, or its close neighbors. If you’re lucky, they’ll shave off a star or two at the top because it wasn’t the second coming of Christ. Don’t expect anybody voting at the other end of the scale to shave off anything.

I’m not sure what drives this phenomenon, but it is observable. Whether you go online and look at the numbers or just listen to the scuttlebutt around the water cooler, there seems to be a reverse bell curve governing people’s opinions about entertainment. In the parlance of Beavis and Butthead, either “it rules” or “it sucks.”

Why is there such an absence of more varied opinions? Why isn’t there a more complex gradation between the two poles? Here’s my theory. Outside of natural selection, there aren’t many ways for something complex to arise from something simple. You’re probably not going to get a thoughtful, well-rounded opinion from a simplistic viewing process. If all you’re doing is passively absorbing what the screen pumps at you, then you’ll likely respond just one way or the other. It becomes a reflex. It rules or it sucks, and damn the very notion that anybody should discuss it more deeply.

Movies are for thinking about. Art is for thinking about. If you go into it thinking that it’s okay to turn your brain off–or worse, that you should turn your brain off–then you’re depriving yourself. You’re disabling yourself from knowing real crap when you see it, and you’re closing yourself off to the sheer richness of a truly good movie.

Most of all, you’re shutting off the critical faculties that are necessary for knowing when a movie isn’t great, and isn’t crap, but just… is. What doesn’t deserve your best appraisal doesn’t necessarily deserve your worst. Some movies are just lightweight entertainments.

Setting the record straight, I believe Avatar is worth seeing. To say that it’s the best film of the year, or even a great film at all, is worrying. It’s certainly an imaginative, pretty film, with many evocative moments and much else to write home about. No, it isn’t especially well-acted, and the plot is low on both subtlety and originality, but plot and acting are highly overrated phenomena. Perhaps its worse crime is that its visuals are so splendid that the rest of the production just isn’t audacious enough to keep up. This is by no means a bad film, and certainly not a “1″ on the IMDB scale. But neither is it a “10.”

Your homework is to look up a bunch of movies on IMDB and check out their user ratings. Look for how many people voted at the extreme ends of the scale, versus how many voted for the middle ratings. Test my theory.

(And yes, I realize it’s been a long time since the last update. For the few people who may have noticed, I apologize. Hopefully normalcy will resume soon.)

I have been challenged. At least, I think I’ve been challenged, so I will respond as such. On the Shoryuken.com forums, a conversation broke out in the movie thread regarding the creation of Top 10s, Best ofs, and similar lists. When I expressed my own ambivalence about it, P. Gorath responded:

P. Gorath: I think it’s a good exercise to objectively rank things close to you. Deciding on criteria helps you focus what’s important to you and carry that moving forward.

And so, it is done. Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

To make this early foray a little easier on myself, this is going to be—conservatively, I think—a top 10 ranking of the greatest movies ever made. It is structured as a countdown, because these lists are always done as countdowns. The people who write them probably harbor the ridiculous notion that the audience cares enough to feel a sense of suspense about what the next title will be. Far be it from me to break tradition. You’ll have to start at the lowly 10th greatest film (these lists are never out of nine, 11, or 27) and work your way down to the Big Kahuna.

An interesting observation on the makeup of the list: the decade with the most titles is the 1970s, and the runner-up is the 1990s. No titles before the 1960s made the top 10, which is likely due to a number of factors. Having grown up in the post-studios, post-Brando age, I’m obviously more comfortable with movies made in the traditions I was born into. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate movies made during the earlier period. It’s that I apparently don’t appreciate them as much. There is also the influence of opportunity. Lists such as this one are inevitably biased towards the recent. Newer titles have a better chance of being seen, and, accordingly, a better chance of getting mentioned.

And now, onto the list.

10. Crumb (1994)

9. Psycho (1961)

8. Woodstock: The Director’s Cut (1970/1994)

7. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

6. Fight Club (1999)

5. Pulp Fiction (1994)

4. Superman (1978)

3. The Godfather (1972)

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

1. Taxi Driver (1976)

There. Now everyone can feel free to “ha-rumph” about the worthy titles that didn’t make it, the unworthy garbage that I dared to rescue, and the unmitigated audacity of putting them in the order that I did.

I find that P. Gorath and I were probably too zealous in our use of the word “objective.” Subjectivity is in the nature of lists like this one. It is my conjecture that any attempt to objectively rank art or entertainment will eventually crumble under close scrutiny. It will reveal itself to be a function of the personal value system of the critic. Assuming the critic is being totally honest about what he appreciates in a film, there is no difference between a list of all-time favorites and a list of all-time greats.

This also means that lists assembled democratically aren’t especially worthwhile. If critics A and B like movie X more than critic C likes movie Y, then movie X only rises above movie Y by virtue of its popularity—which is utterly irrelevant to quality.

There were a few questions I asked myself in paring all my favorite movies down to 10. Did seeing the film leave a profound impact that lasted for days? If it did, the film would be considered for the list. Did I, at one point, have a momentary but consuming obsession with this film? This would goose the film up even higher. Was this film, at one point, considered my all-time favorite? It would be assured a spot near the top. For perspective, I limited my choices to films made during the 20th century. The jury hasn’t even come back in on the cinema of the 2000s yet.

The number one choice of Taxi Driver came easily. I asked myself: out of all the great film directors, who most deserves a spot on the list? Martin Scorsese has the distinction of making not just one, but two decade-defining masterpieces. He kicked off the 1980s with Raging Bull, setting the bar so high that everything after it was sure to pass beneath. And then there was Taxi Driver in the 1970s. These two films alone would distinguish Scorsese, even without the entirety of his body of work. I chose Taxi Driver for the simple reason that if I could discount all other Scorsese films, even Raging Bull, Taxi Driver is the one that would stay with me forever.

I recently saw this question posted in (don’t judge me) the Internet Movie Database forums: Is it possible for a TV show to last without overturning its premise? The question was asked in reference to sci-fi and fantasy shows, but it applies to just about any kind of indefinitely long-running story. I will broaden the question: Is it possible for any long-running story to last without overturning its premise?

What’s a premise, in this context? The short answer is “what the story is about.” The premise of Smallville is that it’s about Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in their teen years, before they become superhero and supervillain, respectively. The premise of The Simpsons is that it’s a less fantastical, more dysfunctional look at the typical sitcom family. The premise of House, MD is that it’s a group of doctors who specialize in bizarre cases that nobody else can handle.

Let’s go for a more accurate definition. The premise is nothing more than the set of conditions, or limitations, that determines what a story is going to be about. And what it’s not going to be about, for that matter.

Example: Alec Holland is an experimental plant researcher in the bayous of Louisiana. One day, he becomes the victim of an act of sabotage. He mutates into the Swamp Thing, a man/plant hybrid monster, which must take revenge on the perpetrators and find a way to become human again.

Now, maybe there’s some other interesting stuff happening in Louisiana at the same time–political scandals, achievements in the arts, and so on–but that’s not in the story, because it falls outside of the conditions of the premise.

One condition of the premise is that Swamp Thing is trying to become human again. If he does, then his goal–the thing he wants, which drives him to do what he does–is met. There’s no more story. The main character is done. His character problem, the problem that falls within the conditions of the premise, has been solved.

Maybe he has other problems. Maybe Alec Holland has severe credit card debt, or a little cousin with autism. But that’s not in the story because it falls outside of the premise.

If Swamp Thing were a one-off story, like a novel or a movie, this would be no big deal. Assuming an optimistic ending, Swamp Thing would beat the bad guys, figure out how to become human again, and live happily ever after with the friends he meets along the way.

But Swamp Thing was an ongoing comic book series–to be continued forever, no end in sight.

Swamp Thing needs to become human again, or there’s no reason for the story to move. But if Swamp Thing solves this problem, the story ends and DC Comics is out of a monthly title. The premise, the set of conditions that determines what the story is about, has put the writers in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position.

There are a couple solutions. One of them, typically employed on TV shows, is to gradually lessen the importance of the conditions and hope the audience doesn’t notice. The premise becomes broader, more inclusive, less distinct. The story becomes less specific, more directionless, more bloated, more meandering. Everything but the kitchen sink can be included, with hit-or-miss results. This happened in Swamp Thing for a while, causing a decline in the quality of the series. On the Simpsons, this approach produced the finest TV comedy of the ‘90s.

A riskier solution is to, in one swift motion of authorial godhood, abruptly destroy the premise and implement a new one. If it works, the story has a new lease on life. If not, the story is reduced to utter ridiculousness. This solution was successfully implemented in Swamp Thing, courtesy of a daring-but-then-unknown British gentleman by the name of Alan Moore. In just a couple of key issues, he introduced plot points that completely redefined (let’s all say it together this time) the conditions that determine what the story is about.

This not only freed the books of the limitations that had come to shackle them, but introduced new ones that kept a strong sense of direction and did not pose the same Catch-22 as the previous ones.

In answer to the original question, I would say it’s necessary to do SOMETHING to the premise. Once you’ve explored every cubic inch of the box you’re in, there’s nothing else you can do. You either find a new box, or look for ways to expand the box you’re already in. Or you do something that, Seinfeld aside, is unthinkable in American television: you end the story before it becomes necessary to ask questions like this one.

During the spring semester of this year, I took a university class on visual rhetoric. For my final project in that class, I chose to apply the principles learned in class, plus the elements of comics design, to a series of pages selected from various comics. My goal was to analyze what makes each page tick, and make a case for comics as one of the chief forms of art, entertainment, and information in the 21st century. I chose to do the project as a PowerPoint slide show, for reasons explained by the disclaimer at the end.

As a further disclaimer, a YouTube video and a PowerPoint slide show obviously have different sets of capabilities. Due to its design, YouTube cannot do some of the things that PowerPoint can, such as turning text boxes on and off with the click of a button, or navigating to any slide at any time with a drop-down menu. Though unintentionally, this makes a further case for the unique advantages of viewing a work in its native medium, rather than through adaptation.

There is also a certain loss of quality due to compression, first from the video software and then through the conversion to YouTube’s format. With that in mind, I’ve provided a sharper version of each image used in the video at the end of this entry.

Here’s the video, split into three parts:

And here are the images.

Superheroes are a genre that isn’t without its potential, but what potential it does have has been squandered on countless bland copycat characters and long-running story threads that don’t get resolved, get resolved unsatisfactorily, or were never based on a good idea in the first place. Even though I don’t particularly care for superheroes, Superman has always been one of a handful of exceptions.

I’m sure one reason is the way that he, more than any other character in the genre, is inextricably linked with and reflective of American culture. Whatever was going on in the life and times of the country was going on in the life and times of Superman. There was no hero to swoop in and save us from the villains who took advantage of our inability to defend ourselves during the Depression, so we invented one. Post-war, Americans wanted a figure of authority to reassure them, so Superman stepped up. During the 60s, a time when we were reflecting upon and questioning the values that had shepherded us through the early adolescence of our country, Superman was questioning himself—and at the height of his physical powers, at that. It is generally accepted that Superman is a walking symbol of the American ideal, whatever form it happens to take at the time.

Post-Nixon, Americans lost trust in their heroes, and that, I think, is what led to a series of progressively weird and misguided attempts to figure out who Superman was to the contemporary audience. (A hard feat for modern writers who never understood who Superman was to any audience in the first place.) It’s very easy to write and read dark, violent Batman stories that confirm the suspicions and fulfill cynical the fantasies. Perhaps a character who staunchly represents optimism and progress is too challenging to the popular sensibilities of today.

Just as a refresher, a “+” indicates a recommended title. “Favorable factor” indicates a title that, while otherwise not recommended, has at least one element of note. A “-“ indicates a title that is not recommended.

SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS (COMICS, 1998)
Tim Sale’s recognizable style has limited applications, most evident here in the form of a pudgy, graceless Man of Steel. The art fares better in other areas, but it’s Jeph Loeb’s overwriting that ultimately sinks this attempt at introspective, episodic storytelling. -

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OST (MUSIC, 1998)
It isn’t the authentic film recordings—it’s better. It’s more complete, more dynamic, far grander in every way. When the trumpets of the Royal Scottish Orchestra announce the three syllables that make up the character’s name, it really swaggers. This is how this music should sound. +

PEACE ON EARTH (COMICS, 1998)
I’ve often thought of Alex Ross as an artist in search of a format. His paintings sure do make the characters look suitably larger than life, but comic book storytelling is almost exclusively the domain of the pencil artist for a reason. Photorealistic watercolor is too dense and self-conscious to really move a narrative—unless it’s a sparse, open narrative such as the one Paul Dini contributes to this project. His perceptive and elegant world hunger parable is a fine canvas for Ross’s arresting style. +

JUSTICE LEAGUE (TELEVISION, 2001)
The format is an interesting choice: 45 minute stories divided into two parts each, featuring an ensemble cast. Timm and Co., perhaps for the first time, seem unsure of their footing at times, unwisely nerfing Superman and committing a variety of other errors. Nevertheless, there are some good stories to be had, and Michael Rosenbaum is a hoot as The Flash. +

SMALLVILLE (TELEVISION, 2001)
The premise: it’s Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, before the costumes, before the alter-egos, before the life-long conflict. The progress towards their destinies is the storytelling fuel, which inevitably runs low once there’s nothing left to do besides put on tights and fly. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The decently written second and third seasons successfully rise above season one’s repetitive freaks of the week. Season four successfully rises above the shark.

SUPREME: STORY OF THE YEAR (COMICS, 2002)
There is an audience out there with a lot of background in Silver Age superhero comics, and there is an audience out there that appreciates obnoxiously clever meta-fiction. The audience for this book lies within the intersection. No, the title character isn’t Superman, but he might as well be. +

BIRTHRIGHT (COMICS, 2003)
Big summer blockbuster storytelling, with big summer blockbuster flaws. Mark Waid seems to realize that relevance isn’t about attempting to integrate current issues, but he does it anyway. But the real offense is that it’s a superfluous remix of a story that’s had more than its share of superfluous remixes. -

RED SON (COMICS, 2003)
It’s Superman, with all the compassion but none of the wisdom to keeps it in check. While the metaphors are obvious and not especially daring, this oddball Stalinist reimagining is a nice way of looking at the classic superhero themes of power and responsibility (eat your heart out, Spidey) from an unusual angle. +

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES (COMICS, 2003)
Interesting concept, abysmal execution. Loeb’s signature overwriting and a prodigious number of cameos supplant any possibility of a story, but—to his dubious credit—at least Superman and Batman don’t get into a brawl for the nth time. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The brief Tim Sale-penciled vignette at the beginning is the one salvageable element in this flashy mess of a comic.

THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD (COMICS, 2004)
“Greatest Hits” collections typically place too much emphasis on inclusiveness, sampling various periods in the attempt to represent all of them. Greatness, more often than not, does not fall evenly on the timeline, which this compendium proves as well as any other. FAVORABLE FACTOR: Elliot S! Maggin’s “Must There Be a Superman?” smartly suggests that Superman shouldn’t help too much, while Jim Steranko’s “Exile on the Edge of Eternity” applies innovative visuals to a Clarke-esque storyline.

IT’S A BIRD… (COMICS, 2004)
This Superman writer’s contradictory feelings about the character mirror his contradictory feelings about a hereditary family disease, as told in this (kind of) true story. It’s peppered with short vignettes that cast a critical eye on various elements of the Superman myth, which are interesting if Watchmen wasn’t enough of a deconstructionist’s feast for you. +

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED (TELEVISION, 2004)
Timm and Co. successfully resuscitate their Justice League project with shorter episodes and a wider variety of characters. They capture an age of superheroes, but aren’t naïve enough to either ignore the many ramifications or stoop to bland superhero cavalcade beat-em-ups. The first season is undoubtedly smarter and much more interesting, but the Flash/Luthor mind swap in the second season is too funny to miss. +

SECRET IDENTITY (COMICS, 2004)
There is a fictional character named Clark Kent, secretly a superhero. There is a real person (or a less fictional character?) named Clark Kent, also secretly a superhero, who lives his double life generally unhappy about being named after the fictional character. I promise the story is more touching and less obnoxiously clever than it sounds. +

ALL STAR SUPERMAN (COMICS, 2005)
The imagination, human optimism, and breakneck storytelling of classic Superman are wedded with modern authorial and artistic sophistication. In my experience, this is not only a definitive and marvelous take on the character, but the superhero genre’s strongest claim to real artistic merit. +

SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT (FILM, 2006)
Editor Michael Thau gamely attempts to cobble together a jigsaw puzzle with several missing pieces, and the final picture is discernible enough if you squint hard. This chop-job Superman II, thematically, is a much better companion—indeed, a much better second half—to the 1978 original. It ups the romance and reduces the sound and fury, leaving the final lesson (including that time travel sequence, which works best here where it belongs) all the more bittersweet. +

SUPERMAN RETURNS (FILM, 2006)
Oft-maligned, much-misunderstood, semi-reboot. Director Bryan Singer deserves criticism for not delivering the classical rendition that the title promises. He also deserves praise for daring to hurt the invulnerable man. +

SUPERMAN RETURNS OST (MUSIC, 2006)
John Ottman does an admirable job of devising his own musical take on Superman while integrating the classic cues at the right moments, though his own stuff curiously sounds better rehearsed. It’s much moodier and less grand than the Williams score that precedes it, but it would have been a mistake to not stake out new territory. +

DOOMSDAY (FILM, 2007)
Timm and Co.’s track record was so sterling at this point that the announcement of a spate of feature DVDs probably wasn’t greeted with enough skepticism. It isn’t as bloated or shamelessly commercialistic as its source material, but successfully adapts the rest of the weaknesses. -

JUSTICE LEAGUE: NEW FRONTIER (FILM, 2008)
I’ve not read the book that this is based on, but its poppy artwork is well-matched by the animators. This is a very good-looking film. Too bad the story whips along so fast that there isn’t enough time for the high concept to get off the ground. So much happens, none of it interesting. FAVORABLE FACTOR: It has a clever way of dealing with the evolution of superhero archetypes in the 20th century, particularly Batman’s transition from cold-blooded vigilante to deputized public servant.

As announced last week, today’s entry is the first of a two-part review retrospective, in celebration of the 71st anniversary of Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics. The first review will be of that first appearance and will proceed onward to about the mid ‘90s. Comics, movies, and television shows will all be included.

As with any criticism you might find on this blog, the following reviews don’t claim to be an objective evaluation of their respective subjects. It’s all my opinion. Don’t expect to agree with them 100% of the time unless your tastes mirror mine exactly.

SUPERMAN IN ACTION COMICS #1 (COMICS, 1938)
Sure, the stories were simpler—the morals less complex, the characters rougher around the edges. But the comics of this era were far more bountiful than those of today. Here, for your consideration, are a recounting of Superman’s origin, a brief sidebar offering a plausible explanation for his (then relatively modest) abilities, and a breezy story introducing many long-term staples—all in a dozen pages or so. Can the ponderous, incremental superhero stories of today really be considered an improvement? +
[Action Comics #1 is available for online reading here.]

SUPERMAN: THE SUNDAY STRIPS (COMICS, 1939)
Reading these stories collected, back to back, is (probably) infinitely preferable to reading them in their original presentation as weekly fragments. The artwork is excellent, and we get to see plenty of Superman in his early days of righteous, if somewhat shapeless, social anger. +

SUPERMAN: THE FLEISCHER CARTOONS (FILM, 1941)
They lack scope, but there are more than enough heroics to make up for it. All the basic elements of the myth are here, drawn vividly in the definitive style of Joe Shuster. These first appearances in fluid motion are as sensational as a flying superhero ought to be. +

SUPERMAN: THE FAMOUS STUDIOS CARTOONS (FILM, 1943)
Obtaining a Max Fleischer property, unfortunately, doesn’t mean obtaining Max Fleischer quality. The difference? Fleischer’s lighthearted sci-fi adventures can be appreciated sincerely. This blatant ham-fisted war propaganda can only be appreciated ironically. –

THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (TELEVISION, 1951)
It’s Clark Kent as a reporter first, donning the tights only when the stakes are at their highest. Perhaps this choice was a necessity of effects-spare ‘50s television, but it worked better here than it ever has in the comics. +

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (FILM, 1978)
The makers of this picture view the titular character as mythic and human in all the ways that count. In spite of the misplaced time travel sequence, Superman: the Movie makes an excellent case for their position. Everyone in this production delivers, especially Superman himself. +

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE OST (MUSIC, 1978)
The music is larger than life. It’s bold, it’s optimistic, it soars; it is the essence of Superman distilled into sine waves. It is therefore a slur on the composer’s reputation that an otherwise powerful score should be preserved in a sonically anemic, truncated document such as this one. -

SUPERMAN II (FILM, 1981)
There is a profound discomfort when differing directorial visions clash. In this installment, mayhem and hokey tricks overwrite myth and humanity, leaving Superman II a superficial imitation of 30% of itself. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The chemistry between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder is the strongest holdover from the vastly superior previous installment.

SUPERMAN III (FILM, 1983)
From opposite ends of the cosmos, a bad Superman movie and a bad Richard Pryor movie travel on a collision course. Shrapnel flies. Gravity violently fluctuates. Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor) becomes Robert Vaughn (generic technocrat). Chaos ensues. -

SUPERMAN ANNUAL #15: FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING (COMICS, 1985)
The Watchmen writer/artist duo manages to wed crowd-pleasing action, fan-pleasing Easter eggs, and intelligentsia-pleasing meditations on greener grass. Never mistake it for the inferior television counterpart, which lacks the necessary context. +

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW? (COMICS, 1986)
Dark portent appropriately gives way to sunny optimism in the last Superman story of the Silver Age. It’s heartfelt in its desire to hit all the bases, and while that means a slightly silly everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach, it’s infinitely preferable to the reboot that followed. +
[Superman Annual #15 and both parts of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? are both available in the trade paperback volume The DC Comics Stories of Alan Moore.]

SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (FILM, 1987)
You will believe a man can pose on wires in front of a scrolling backdrop. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The film (Reeve himself, actually) has the audacity to suggest that even Superman’s best intentions can’t solve every problem. It’s a great idea that can be, should be, and has been done better.

THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN (COMICS, 1992)
In this tale of masturbatory violence and crass commercialism, our hero is tragically felled by (wait for it) a walking plot device that, quite literally, pops up out of the ground one day. It has no relevance to anything, other than perhaps itself. If Superman is the American ideal, then what does this bode for America? -

SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (TELEVISION, 1996)
This amalgam of many editions of the character is too heavy on the post-1986 “earthling” Superman for my taste, but it’s smoother than any blend has a right to be. For the creators, Batman: the Animated Series is still the standard to beat. The third season of this show, smart and thematically rich, rises to the challenge, and the rest of it is pretty good too. +

As everybody knows, Battlestar Galactica is a science fiction television show about space and stuff. And as everybody knows, BC Woods writes a live commentary about each new episode on his blog, Dunce upon a Time. And as everybody knows, Rob did his own commentary on BC’s commentary a couple weeks ago on Freak Safari.

What everyone doesn’t know is that I’m too busy to write out any of my good ideas lately, so I’m going to dash off something a little different this time around: I will be writing a blog entry about Rob’s blog entry about BC Woods’ blog entry about Battlestar Galactica. I’m pretty sure this is the cleverest thing anybody’s thought of since Thomas Edison invented electricity.

I think Kara is a humanoid Cylon. Now, hear me out!

It should be noted that I’ve never seen this show once in my life, so I don’t know what a Cylon is. It could be something important to you, BC…but to me it’s just another way of reminding people you’re still a virgin.

Jokes about nerds being perpetual virgins? Seriously, he lives in Adberdeen, he midwifes for goats, he has a family that Springer would reject for not being classy enough, and this is the best you’ve got? Maybe you’re just saving the “A” material for the people who point out you live in Jersey.

So I think Starbuck is part of a third faction that is trying to unite the humans and Cylons together. Remember, we haven’t yet met the faction that is responsible for Head Six and Head Baltar.

BC, it isn’t too late. It hasn’t started yet. You can STILL change the channel and do something interesting. You don’t have to do this. You can still turn back.

It should be noted that I’ve never seen the show before, either. In fact, I’ve never seen the show before, period. I haven’t even read BC’s blog entry of it. All I know about this episode is what I’m able to infer from the context clues contained in the quotes from Rob’s entry.

“So I think Starbuck is part of a third faction that is trying to unite the humans and Cylons together. Remember, we haven’t yet met the faction that is responsible for Head Six and Head Baltar.”

Which is absolutely nothing.

Zarak just hit orange suit in the head with a wrench. See what kind of people you’re dealing with Gaeta? Do you see? Zarak has assured him that it wasn’t going to be the last person he killed. Oh God Zarak, you are so full of fucking bullshit. Listen to him pontificate about how good he is at revolution. Uh, if you’re the same Tom Zarak as before we met you on a prison ship ya asshole.

BC, are posts like this really necessary? Or are they kind of over-the-top extra posts that target a very specific niche that nobody cares about…like those people who do sign language at elementary school plays for deaf parents? Unnecessary.

Rob, BC is merely demonstrating his personal rapport with the characters on this show by conversing with them directly in the second person. You know you wish you could empathize with the conflicts of Zarak, Gaeta, Genghis, Liu Kang, Mark Wahlberg, and the rest of the Funky Bunch.

In other news, I’m currently writing this in the MSU library café and I accidentally just locked eyes with a guy in a Watchmen movie t-shirt. I’m resisting the urge to go over there and lecture him.

Also, if you didn’t see it at the top of the liveblog IamRob is liveblogging me liveblogging Battlestar Galactica. I don’t know why he’s doing this, but it’s just meta enough that I find if funny. If someone who is reading this has a blog could you please liveblog Rob liveblogging me and tell me about it? And maybe, just maybe can you organize yourselves so that everyone with a blog is liveblogging someone else who is liveblogging me? I think that could be tremendously nuts and hilarious.

Dude, this show is fucking terrible, BC. This is just awful. I feel like I’ve seen these actors before. Yes I’m sure of it. Oh wait, no…they were the apes in Congo. My bad. And for everyone who reads this. BC Woods loves getting porn in his email. So send it to him at brandoncwoods@gmail.com.

I’ll have you all know that I had the idea to do this before I knew about this part. IT’S MINE AND YOU CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME.

That is, of course, by design. I know this technically isn’t a “live” blog, but everything is as fresh to me now as it was to everyone who read it in progress. The only missing element is timeliness.

I don’t know why I don’t have nerd friends though. All my friends are assholes. Like Rob. I guess you seek out what you grew up with.

Ok so now BC Woods is calling me an asshole for doing this. I’m doing this for humanity, BC. This is to prevent other people from following in your footsteps. And from what I’ve read of your website, if you were seeking out what you grew up with, wouldn’t you be seeking out pregnant psycho-super cunt demons?

I’m doing this to make fun of both of you, while ignoring the obvious hypocrisy that I’m just as bad as either of you. Well, maybe not as bad as Rob.

Now she’s talking about whether or not there is something between them. Was it her? No. It was a Cylon thing. Programming. Now someone has put a black bag over Ander’s head and they’re all beating the crap out of him. That chick is still hot though.

BC is talking a lot about the show. The characters all have weird names…like they were creatures in a Zelda game. This show is so fucking terrible. I can’t understand how someone who writes so well and has legitimately interesting stories is fascinated by something so bad. And what the hell is a Cylon? Are they the equivalent of a Psychlo from the equally bad sci-fi movie, Battlefield Earth?
And please. You don’t think any chick is hot…unless it has the body of a fish or some weird unicorn horn thing going on.

I don’t think any chick is hot unless she can name me her favorite tertiary characters from The Simpsons, but that’s just me.*

(*They can’t be characters who were introduced after the turn of the millennium, or they don’t count. I consider this a major dealbreaker.)

Athena is feeding baby Hera. I can’t wait to see where this horrible mess is going. Helo is buttoning his uniform. The mutineers barged in. They have a gun on Helo. A guy from Pegasus wants to beat up Helo for killing that guy who was going to rape his wife. Now he has been knocked unconscious. Helo is my favorite actor on this show.

BC, why does everyone sound like they’re biting the air when they talk in this show? Only 30 minutes left of this awful shit.

Athena and Hera? God, that’s clever. I bet the writers are big Wikipedia fans.

Not that I want to turn this into a live blog of what I’m doing as I blog Rob’s live blog of BC’s live blog of Battlestar Galactica, but I poured, like, six fucking packets of sugar into this coffee and it still isn’t sweet. Yeah, it’s great that MSU buys domestically produced sugar, but if America can’t produce sugar that doesn’t sink straight to the bottom of the cup, then I’m afraid foreign child labor is the only reasonable solution.

Gaeta is watching his lover leave. Oh you cold fish. How do you think this is going to end up?

With you still not having sex?

Gaeta’s a guy?

Third commercial break. I should ask Rob if there’s a way where the words can become visible on Dunce as I type them. I’m going to go ahead and guess that’s not possible because of the incredible amount of bandwidth it would require but it would still be pretty cool. I wish I had time to check what Rob is saying, but I must keep typing. Type type type. Typetty type type type.

It’s possible, but why? Nobody cares enough about this show for me to put the time into it.
I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in this show, but I can say with 100% certainty that absolutely nothing interesting is going, despite what you read on BC’s blog.
How could you possibly like these characters anyway? They’re either whispering all the time, biting air and sounding like the movie theater previews guy, or just wallowing around the spaceship. If that even is a space ship. It looks like a sewer.

My favorite show that takes place in a sewer is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Fun fact: the Turtles were originally designed by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird as a parody of the “grim ‘n’ gritty” attitude that was creeping into mainstream comics in the ‘80s. See, they’re teenagers, so they have angst. They’re ninjas, because ninjas are cool and have badass weapons and masks and whatnot. They’re mutants, because that’s how the big companies explained most of their ridiculous character designs. And they’re turtles, because getting your ass kicked by a slow animal that can be defeated by flipping it onto its back is just funny.

Laird and Eastman were ahead of their time. They got their jabs in before the trend got out of hand and “grim ‘n’ gritty” became a pejorative. Cowabunga.

I really have a feeling we’re going to see a LOT of people die this episode.

If by “die” you mean, “Do absolutely nothing for an hour and play grabass with each other,” then you may be onto something.
But to put things into perspective:
Kill count: 0
Homosexual Activity count: 112

And here you are, blogging a guy. How the blog do you think it looks when you’re blogging some dude because he’s nerdy enough to blog a show like this? Motherblogger.

Spent casings all over the floor. Lots of people are dying.

Are we watching the same show? Nobody died. I heard a gunshot, but it came from a woman so you know she missed. In fact, I rewound it just to be sure. Yep, nobody died. Your big hands type big lies!
EDIT: This show is getting good. I just saw a…oh wait. Nevermind, it was a commercial for the new Call of Duty game.
Death Count is still 0 as far as I’m concerned, BC. This show was absolutely horrendous. It was like a soap opera taking place in space. How do you sleep at night? Probably in Star Wars pajamas.

Wait a minute. People are firing guns inside a spaceship? Isn’t that a really bad idea? Don’t bullets make holes in things? And isn’t the functionality of a spaceship contingent on whether or not there are any holes in it? Death count: everything inside the ship that depends on oxygen, warmth, and a pressurized environment in order to live.

YES! YES THE ADMIRAL AND THE PRESIDENT ARE KISSING! I HAVE WAITED ALL MY FUCKING LIFE FOR THIS SINGLE MOMENT. SLIDE SOME TONGUE… OKAY OR JUST HUG… I’LL ADMIT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS BEST.

Your level of nerd is unprecedented. In three words: I hate you. In another three: Get a girl. In two more: You suck.
And just think, I could’ve been much happier watching the Suite Life of Zack and Cody than this shit.

And what did we learn from all this? I don’t know. I still have no idea what happened, so I’ll just invent a story that will hopefully make some kind of logical sense out of it.

Kara is a humanoid Cylon, which is a type of vacuum cleaner. It’s manufactured by Oreck, so that disturbingly nice man can be in the commercial and lift Kara by the neck without tearing his rotator cuff. Starbuck is obviously a coffee shop conglomerate. Since Starbuck is trying to unite the humans and the Cylons, I assume the floors of their shops are getting messy. There is apparently “a faction that is responsible for Head Six and Head Baltar,” which I take to be a euphemism for pornography. Zarak is a mechanic with an orange suit he doesn’t like very much, and Gaeta is his boss.

Ander has a black bag over his head and he’s getting the shit beaten out of him, which means he’s either an Iraqi terror suspect or he’s an American participating in a left wing propaganda photo shoot. I’ll go with the latter. Athena, Hera, Helo, the mutineers, and the guy from Pegasus all appear far too close together and with far too little contextual information for me to figure them out, but it’s worth noting that Helo is an actor. If he’s anything like Joey from Friends, he probably likes pizza and sandwiches a lot, so there’s that.

Finally, the admiral and the president kiss. And you know they’re a couple of dudes, because everyone knows the only women allowed on spaceships are too shrewish to be attractive. Or so I’ve learned from Star Wars.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Use the comment feature, or visit the discussion thread.

P.A.C.E. stands for Parking And Code Enforcement. If you’re a student, employee, or visitor at Michigan State University, P.A.C.E. is the organization responsible for monitoring the parking meters and garages scattered around campus. You’ll see them on foot with portable citation devices in their hands, or driving around in trucks labeled “motorist assistant vehicle.”

I think I speak for everyone at MSU when I extend my gratitude to P.A.C.E. for their exemplary service to us all. In fact, I can’t think of another organization that operates with such a high level of focus, dedication, and efficiency.

See, I was running late for my job this morning, so instead of parking in my usual space just off campus, I decided to park at a meter nearer to where I needed to be. I put in 75 cents, which buys 30 minutes—the maximum amount of time allowed. Returning within half an hour was a little unfeasible, but I hurried and managed to get back to the meter not long after that. Uncannily, not only had I already been ticketed, but, judging from the time stamp, the ticket was written literally within a minute of my time expiring.

Oh, I knew there was a good chance I’d be ticketed, and seeing a ticket flapping under everyone else’s wiper blade on the way to my vehicle was a bad omen, but this was something else entirely. These people are ticket-writing ninjas. They’re like a SWAT team, called in especially to handle our most important parking enforcement crises. In fact, I’ve dramatized their exploits in the following image:

Heart-pounding, isn’t it? There’s Jack Bauer, there’s MacGyver, there’s Batman, and then there’s the current P.A.C.E. officer on duty. (Usually an underpaid student goon with apparently no regard whatsoever for the social suicide that the job entails. I, for one, respect that kind of self-esteem.) Prior to this morning, I had no idea they were so tightly coordinated or precisely timed. No idea whatsoever! I wasn’t enlightened until the final second of my parking time clicked by and the agents of P.A.C.E., exactly on cue, rappelled down from their quietly hovering Boeing Chinook. With a machine gun tempo, they slapped ticket after ticket on everybody’s windshield and vanished back into the cold morning clouds from whence they came, so quickly that any onlooking students could have easily blamed the sightings on their own excessive drug use.

Compassion is, of course, a human weakness that is filtered out early on in P.A.C.E. training, which takes place in a reinforced bunker beneath campus that can only be entered through camouflaged access points. Even in the event that you can successfully narrate the exact 334 character passcode, your body might be torn to leaflets by the machine gun emplacements to the left, right, top, and bottom of the triple-layered steel doors. All it takes is for the guards or their dogs to sense even a hint of trouble, and your body is given more zippers than a Levi’s factory.

It is of no concern to them that the only non-metered, non-hourly parking options for non-staff are the far-flung commuter lots. It is of no concern to them that the bus ride between those lots and campus, already at least 10 minutes in length, has been increased more than twofold by indefinite heavy construction. It is of no concern to them that none of the parking options are priced especially within reason, and that their exorbitant citations further compound that expenditure. And it is of no concern to them that every expense the students must pay is in addition to MSU’s tuition costs, which puts many of its students into insurmountable debt by the time they graduate.

No, P.A.C.E. will make no allowances or exceptions. They must do their job, and they do it well.

Thank you, P.A.C.E. For everything.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Use the comment feature, or visit the discussion thread.