SPOILER ALERT! If you read this post, and you haven’t seen the BSG finale, I’ll ruin it for you. Dad, this means you. Seriously, stop reading right now.
Well, the final episode of Battlestar Galactica has come and gone. I must admit to suffering from some serious anxiety in the hours leading up to the finale. Would it be good? Would it make sense? Would I like it?
The answers: mostly, sort of, and I think so, respectively.
Now, I’m no pilot, but I always thought the ideas was to eject before your plane became a churning fireball. But then again, both crewmembers survived. So maybe they know something I don’t.
And if that isn’t awesome enough, check out this eyewitness account:
At one point the discussion lit a fire under the Admiral, and the talk of human rights turned personal for Edward James Olmos. The “Old Man” launched into a passionate speech about casting off the idea of race as a cultural determinant, and said we were one race, the human race. His voice echoed throughout the chamber growing louder until – I kid you not – he was yelling, “So Say We All,” and the crowd answered right back. Hell, even I yelled it, I was in the frakking United Nations with Adama, the gods themselves could not have stopped this moment. It was surreal – the entire audience turned into one massive optimistic/role-playing/saddened goosebump, because who knows when we’ll ever hear those words again? And then we were doubly geeked out when, as if on cue, Mary McDonnell turned to Olmos and put her hand on his cheek. But the real chills came from realizing that this treasured television show had actually opened up the lines of communication between the audience and the United Nations. BSG has made people think about the troubling deeds happening in darkened rooms in the present day, not just on a spaceship in the future.
Wow. I’ve always said BSG was one of the smartest shows about politics and society on TV. And I guess this proves it.
But seriously, who do I need to sleep with to get tickets for this stuff? Is there some secret “mailing list of awesome” I need to join? Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
1986′s awesome The Transformers: The Movie is one of my top-ten favourite films. There are so many reasons to love it. That scene where Optimus Prime is in truck mode, blasts into the air, transforms, does a kickass twisting flip, and then shoots a bunch of Decepticons in the face; Orson Welles voicing a planet-sized devourer of worlds in a vaguely tragic case of art-imitating-life; not one, but two definite articles in the title; and one of the greatest movie songs of all time.
I am, of course, speaking of Stan Bush‘s immortal classic, “The Touch”. I mean, how can you argue with charmingly incoherent lyrics like:
You got the touch
You got the power
After all is said and done
You’ve never walked, you’ve never run,
You’re a winner
Sure, the rational among you might be asking, “If you neither walk nor run, how do you get around?” But you’re missing the point. Since you’ve got “the touch”, mere questions of mobility are entirely inconsequential. You’re a winner!
To my six-year-old self, this song was a close to a moral code as I could imagine. If Optimus Prime was my Christ figure, then “The Touch” was the song Christ listened to before blasting a bunch of Roman soldiers with a particle cannon.
My six-year-old self says yes. In honour of that wide-eyed youngster, sprinting away from schoolyard bullies while singing “The Touch” under his breath, here is Mr. Bush’s masterwork in its full glory:
