Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is stealing an post type from FLG again.

He is currently listening to:

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has done something he doesn’t do very often. He’s gone to the movies. He went and saw “Star Trek” a few weeks ago. He saw “The Hangover” on Friday night.

Your Maximum Leader is something of a Trekkie. So he approached the “reboot” of the franchise with a little trepidation. All in all the film was very good and quite entertaining. He is a bit put off with the destruction of Vulcan (and the death of Amanda - Spock’s mother, played by one of your Maximum Leader’s favorites Winonna Ryder). He also wonders if Star Trek will ever be able to tell a decent story without some sort of time/space continuum story-line. This film did a great job of it, but it is a tired formula.

Oh yeah… And the actress who plays Uhura is HAWT! Grrr baby! Very Grrr!

Last Friday night your Maximum Leader went out and saw “The Hangover.”

Three days later he still has a small sore spot in his side from laughing so hard. It is a great fun film. All in all your Maximum Leader will agree with Ted at Pajiba’s review. The points of disagreement with Ted are these: 1) the short transitions that he mentions were necessary to catch your breath if you were watching in a crowded cinema; 2) your Maximum Leader doesn’t see how Heather Graham’s role could have been improved by a more talented comedic actress. It was a bit part.

Two thumbs up for both films… Catch ‘em if you can.

Carry on.

I wonder if Michael J. Fox’s medical condition is in any way related to him being the evil anti-Elvis.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader’s friend FLG sent him a link to a page with a title that read thus: Art Peaks Forever as Two Chicks Lightsaber Battle in Their Underwear Without Irony. FLG comments that your Maximum Leader “might like this.”

Might like it? Hell. Your Maximum Leader LOVES IT.

For your viewing pleasure:

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is taking a page from his friend FLG and tell you all a few of the songs he just got dished out on his little black iPod. He is about to sign off for the evening and go to the Capitals game tonight with Villainette #2. If you happen to be in that area of town keep an eye out for him.

(Your Maximum Leader also likes Summertime by The Sundays - but you can’t embed that video. Clicky this linky to view.)

Whenever your Maximum Leader hears this Dino song he mentally thanks his friend Eric for turning him on to his little ditty.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sits at his computer at 11:44pm on a Friday night. Why? Well he’s done watching the BSG finale of course… BTW, is the post title a little heretical?

Some random thoughts. (And spoilers he supposes…)

NB to Robbo: No Dirk Benedict ending. Although at one point it seemed nearly plausible.

Anyhoo…

Random thoughts…

Didn’t see “Earth” coming after the big battle. It is clever to come back to the idea after introducing it once and dashing our hopes once…

Only slightly disappointed in the (non-) resolution of the whole “what is Starbuck” story line. One must suppose that she, like the Six in Baltar’s head and the Baltar in Six’s head is some sort of angel doing the will of God. Either that or the Six in Baltar’s head is the Oracle and the Baltar in Six’s head is the Architect of a strange universal Matrix.

Was glad to see Laura Roslin gettin’ jiggy with an ex-student in the flashback sequence.

Sorta liked the flashback sequences, although it would have been interesting to know what the job was for which Adama was interviewing. (It also would have been interesting to see more of the strippers in those flashback sequences… Get it? See more… Heh…)

The big battle was a disappointment. Ramming the Galactica into the Cylon colony? Seemed a little thin. And where are all the teeming masses of mechanical Cylons? It was good to see some of the old model Centurions duking it out. All in all they seemed to be rather easily defeated. Cavil, sadly, didn’t get what was coming to him - but died just the same.

Speaking of Cylons… Has anyone else wondered exactly what the Cylons were created by man to do when they rebelled? Apparently they are designed to kick ass and not bother with name-taking. (As it is hard to imagine a Centurion with a hoe plowing in a field.) It would seem that man was asking for trouble from the beginning.

Hera as Mitochondrial Eve. Very interesting… And Moore holding the National Geographic in that last scene. Nice…

It was touching to see Six and Baltar walking off together into the proverbial sunset. (NB: This is Six and Baltar walking off to start cultivating land 150,000 years ago. Not the “angel” Six and Baltar walking the streets of New York.) One hopes they had all sorts of little babies together… Baltar remains, in your Maxmium Leader’s opinion, the most interesting character through the whole series.

Lastly…

Here is what happens after the final credits roll…

According to God’s plan… Earth (populated by Cylon/Human/Native Humanoid decendants starts space exploration. The Earthlings found a remote colony in space which loses contact with the mother planet. The colony (New Kobol) develops and prospers and starts colonizing other worlds as they exhaust their resources. 12 Colonies are founded to replace the old - which lost contact with Earth. The humans eventually build robotic helpers they call Cylons. The Cylons rebel. The Cylons disappear into space. The Cylons come back and destroy the 12 Colonies leaving only Lorne Greene to lead a rag-tag fugitive fleet to that shining planet known as Earth.

Carry on.

Quick update the morning after: Your Maximum Leader forgot to write that he liked the working in of the old orchestral score as Galactica was going to her final destination.

He also forgot to write that the finale was a lot more uplifting than he thought it would be.

You know, he got to thinking about it in the shower this morning that perhaps there is a subtle political message in the finale. The shows creators were all clear in saying that their vision of the show was shaped by the post 9/11 world. Is the finale shaped by the dawning of the Obama era? Just grist for the mill that last thought.

Lastly… Leaving the whole Starbuck plot point open-ended was both brilliant and unsatisfying.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has great readers. Among the greatest is our friend Robbo. In the comments to our previous post on BSG Robbo writes:

As a BSG-TOS purist, I have steadfastly boycotted the series after watching the first one or two episodes.

I would change all that if somebody could assure me that the whole thing ends tonight with Dirk Benedict suddenly waking up in his bunk and saying, “Holy frak, what a dream! I need a drink…”

Okay… If that is how the series ends your Maximum Leader would have two thoughts in his mind… The first would be “That was frakkin’ awesome.” The second would be “Is Tricia Helfer hotter than Suzanne Pleshette?”

At the risk of raising Robbo’s dander… Your Maximum Leader thinks he’d go with Tricia…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is giddy with anticipation to see the end of BSG tonight. He informed his lovely wife and offspring early this morning that he will be completely unavailable for any sort of serious interaction with any of them between the hours of 7pm and 11pm EDT today.

To make it up to them he did promise that he would bring home chinese take-away for dinner.

Giddy I tell you! Positively giddy!

Carry on.

Addendum from your Maximum Leader: Is it possible that readers of this space don’t know that BSG stands for “Battlestar Galactica”? One supposes it is possible.

Did you see the BSG “celebration/discussion” at the UN yesterday? WaPo link to said event here. Wow… This is probably the most interesting thing to occur at the UN in decades… Perhaps this is the biggest event at the UN since Khruschev during the session of the wing-tip whacking. Also… Whoopi Goldberg is apparently a big BSG fan. Who knew? Again in the “who knew” category: According to the WaPo piece the audience watching the first part of the BSG finale (from last week) was 1.7 million. Is it possible that only about 2 million people in the US watch this show regularly? Holy crap if that is the case. Your Maximum Leader assumed it was a much larger audience.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maxmium Leader got his iPod in December 2005. He has loved and cherished it ever since.

A few months ago your Maximum Leader had some nasty PC problems. Eventually, he had to wipe his PC hard drive and reinstall Windows and all his data. This included many GB of iTunes material. Doing this wiped out many playlists that your Maximum Leader had created. It also wiped out the “play count” data stored in iTunes. The “play count” is exactly that, a count of how many times you played a song or podcast or movie or whatever.

After a little while, seeing all those “0″ play counts next to so many songs started to be annoying. So your Maximum Leader created a playlist called “Unplayed.” It was essentially a list including all the songs (not movies, podcasts or tv shows) on his iPod that he’d not listened to since reloading his data onto his PC. At one point this playlist was approximately 6000 songs long.

Today this list contains four songs. They are: “Winter” by Bond; “Got a Man” by Chante Moore; “Red” by Miles Davis; and “Fool to Cry” by the Rolling Stones.

Tonight your Maximum Leader will listen to these four songs and know that he has now played, at least once since his data reload, each of the 8411 songs on his iPod. That is a good feeling.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t read Pajiba for its biting and insightful political commentary. No. He reads Pajiba because he likes to keep up with movies, movie reviews, commentary on current goings-on in Hollywood and such stuff. Yes. Your Maximum Leader reads Pajiba to keep socially current.

Well imagine his shock when he reads biting and insightful political commentary on Pajiba. Well… Biting and insightful political commentary in the guise of a review of the (late and oft-lamented-in-the-Villainschloss) HBO series Rome

If you haven’t read Requiem for the Republic: Rome by Jove you need to click through and read it RIGHT NOW! Here are the first few paragraphs:

“This can only mean that the Republic has fallen.” -Lucius Vorenus
“And yet, the sky is still above us and the earth still below. Strange.” - Titus Pullo

This is a story of how democracy dies.

Rome is the mother of nations. The legend lurking at the dawn of history. The altar at which our laws and governments still worship. Every courthouse and capital echoes the ruins of that ancient city we still haunt. Legalese is still half Latin a millennium since the last native speakers died. Our senators and theirs would hardly notice the difference between each other, besides the togas and Italian suits.

Rome was a young state in an old world. Just old enough to feel confident and experienced, young enough to think it would last forever. For two thousand years, Egyptian slaves had built desert mountains for god kings. Italy was such a backwater for so long that Alexander overran the world from Greece to India, but didn’t bother hopping the Adriatic. Less than three centuries later, Caesar thought he was special. Ozymandias and all that. Empires always believe they’re eternal because men never believe they’re mortal.

They conquered through ingenuity, through a granite faith that their law was the only law. Anything outside of Roman law was barbarian. Order was their one true god, immortalized in all the identical temples and standardized roads. Rational repetition fueled the legions: men trained to fight as a single machine, gears and clockwork carved from flesh, individuality burned off in the smelter. They tamed ancient Egypt, yoked Spain and France, pillaged Greece for fertile minds. They destroyed Carthage so utterly that atomic weapons could not have improved on the job. Who now remembers the American Indians?

They were the first combination of that most potent meme of state: the imperial republic. They always insist that they rule by force for the good of the people. “For the republic!” Say it enough and you believe your own press. They were the embodiment of that ancient dichotomy of war and peace. Pax Romana. Pax Britannica. Pax Americana. It’s lightning in a bottle, catching the fever for empire along with the spasmodic beauty of freedom. An unstable equilibrium cannot last: either the empire exhausts itself or it devours its own children. The British did the former, the Romans the latter, America’s decision is pending. Rome is the story of that devouring.

Damn it is good stuff. Go and read for the love of the Gods!

Also, if you haven’t seen Rome you need to put it in your Netflix queue or buy it. You’ll not be sorry…

(Okay… If you are a stickler for a “historical drama” being more “historical” than “drama” you might be disappointed. If you can put that behind you, you will love it.)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader decided to watch Battlestar Galactica last night on the little TV rather than wait for tonight.

Well… He can’t decide if BSG just jumped the shark (or nuked the fridge - or whatever the hip expression is now). He’ll have to watch the episode again to see if he can get more out of it a second time.

So the final five are the ones who taught the Cylons how to resurrect. The toasters came up with monotheism. Brother “John” Cavil is more evil than we thought. And there might be a grand design implemented by God at work here.

That was a heck of a lot to come up with in one episode.

Your Maximum Leader is wondering if the stress of writing the show isn’t now affecting the storyline. One almost feels as though the writers sat down one day and said “Holy shit! We’ve only got 6 more episodes to wrap this baby up.” (NB: Do people speak numbers rendered as numbers or numbers written in words? Should those writers have said “Holy shit! We’ve only got six more episodes to wrap this baby up.”) Then they went back to the outline and wrote an episode to bring us up to speed.

The status of Starbuck and the mentioning of God at work led your Maximum Leader to have an intersting shower thought. You know how the writers have (mildly) incorporated a few elements from the old series into the current one? (Your Maximum Leader is thinking Pegasus here. Which by the way - it has always stuck in your Maximum Leader’s craw that Pegasus was destroyed and not Galactica. Why sacrifice the the newer better ship and keep the older one around? Especially now that we know that Galactica is falling apart…)

How about this… Remember in the old series that big blue ship that harrassed the fleet for a little bit and then deposited with them that guy who turned out to be some sort of demon? Remember those? What if (in the current series) we have a group of humans/cylons out there who are acting in the role of God? This could be a separate group who’s role is to observe from afar with their superior technology and then hit the reset button when required? They are the ones leaving additional clues - or changing the ones already left to suit altered circumstances (since there seems to be some other force at work per the conversation between Cavil and Ellen about the “Temple of Hope.”)

It’s just a random thought.

Still can’t decide if BSG has started to suck or not.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was beginning to worry. Villainette#2 sleep over is scheduled for tonight. Your Maximum Leader feared for what he was going to have to do in terms of TV watching. He knew that the big uber HD TV was likely out for viewing Battlestar Galactica tonight. He was afraid he was going to watch BSG on the little TV.

But now there is a new plan.

Your Maximum Leader will record BSG on the Tivo in all its HD glory and watch it tomorrow night. Tonight on the little TV he will watch the little gift he gave himself for St Valentine’s Day - but didn’t expect to receive until next week.

Your Maximum Leader bought “My Name is Bruce” from Amazon. He actually ordered it a few weeks ago. He pre-ordered it rather. It was supposed to be released this week. Amazon said that your Maximum Leader should receive it on February 17th. Unexpectedly it appeared at the Villainschloss yesterday evening. Woo hoo!

So, tonight your Maximum Leader will make himself a large adult beverage in a large tiki mug called Grog; pop up some popcorn and watch Bruce Campbell, Sam Rami and the lovely Grace Thorsen fight Guang-di the Chinese God of bean-curd.

How lovely is Grace Thorsen by the way? Judge for yourself:

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was over at Ted’s site and decided to clicky through on the link to visit the “Shrine of the Mall Ninja.”

Oh. Mah. Gawd.

Your Maximum Leader was afraid he was going to laugh so hard he would have some sort of infarction and need medical attention. Your Maximum Leader has met some “mall ninja” types in his day. If you ever visit a gun shop or gun show you are bound to run into your fair share. He thinks he pretty much lost it when he read this:

You’re just jealous that SPECOPS and I have something to show for our lives and you do not. The Corporation’s work is the only thing I can talk about, SPECOPS may have led a more adventurous career, but his actions must have been very above-board for him to be able to discuss this much of his work with you. My “Black-Ops” history ensures that you will never know about the missions I accepted in my younger days, and Vietnam still shudders when it hears the name of a an assasin so skillful and deadly, he is remembered decades later. I hope all of you manage to find some meaning in life, because you obviously have never put your life on the line for others, and until you have almost died, you have never lived. In my profession, you take risks that would be considered impossible to 99% of other men, and undergo pain that the mere shock of which would kill any three of you pantywaists.

Oh my goodness this is good stuff. If you have any experience with this type, you will get a kick out of this site.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has had a few action packed days here recently. He went with the whole family (and his sainted parents) to the Pompeii exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. That was Saturday. It was quite fun for the whole crew. Well… It wasn’t quite as fun for the Wee Villain. He is only 4 however and did spend about 45 minutes in the exhibit before he needed to be excused to sit in the atrium and play his Nintendo to pass time while the rest of the family took in the art and artifacts.

Then on Sunday the celebration of Villainette #2’s tenth birthday began. The extended family got together for a buffet lunch and ice cream cake. Monday was just filled with lots of little time-occupiers. Yesterday was actually Villainette #2’s birthday. She got her special birthday dinner (barbequed chicken, mashed ‘taters, green beans with bacon). This Friday the birthday celebrations come to a close with a sleep-over. Villainette #2 has invited 3 friends to sleep over and play the Wii until all hours of the morning. Your Maximum Leader will likely be up late with the kids - then wake up early to make sure there is a nice big hot breakfast available…

So… Monday night Villainette #1 and your Maximum Leader were driving around town in the Villainmobile while trying to get pick up a last-minute gift for Villainette #2. The ole iPod was plugged in and was dishing out random tunes. A song your Maximum Leader happened to mention in the past was dished out. As the dulcet tones of Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” started to play this little conversation transpired.

Villainette #1 - So Dad, this guy singing has a high voice.

MaxLdr - Yup. He also had blonde hair that was long and feathered like that old picture of your mom hanging up in your Papa’s house. The one you laugh at when you see it.

V1 - So he had long hair like a girl and a high voice?

MaxLdr - Yup. He did.

V1 - Did he dress like a girl too?

MaxLdr - No. He did wear a lot of linen however. It was the style at the time.

V1 - And people liked it?

MaxLdr - Yes. People loved it.

V1 - I’m glad those days are gone.

MaxLdr - Oh… Those were the Reagan years. Halcyon days they were. Feathered hair. Miami Vice. The Soviet Union menacing the free world.

V1 - Dad you can stop. Things are better now.

MaxLdr - Really?

V1 - Really. We have a Wii. Our hair is normal. And we have cool songs like “Black and White” by Katy Perry.

MaxLdr - Hey! Look there! The hot sign is on at Krispy Kreme. Want a doughnut?

And so it went that your Maximum Leader was able to change the subject before he had to start a harsh critique of the “aughts” and Katy Perry.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader found a cool link over on Agent Bedhead’s site. The link takes one to io9.com’s page entitled Elvis Has Left the Planet.

Your Maximum Leader, a great Elvis fan, had never heard of many of the stories and tv episodes that are mentioned on the io9 site. He’ll have to check some out. There was one that your Maximum Leader did see listed that he actually owns on DVD. That would be Bubba-Ho-Tep. io9’s bit on Bubba-Ho-Tep:

Weary of his fame, Elvis decides to take a breather and find someone else to endure his endless public adoration. He exchanges lives with the world’s most convincing Elvis impersonator, but when the facsimile dies on the can, no one believes that Elvis is the genuine King. He lives out his remaining days in relative peace, at least until the mummies and vampires start showing up.

What a great film… Elvis and Jack Kennedy spending their twilight years fighting mummies and vampires…

Check it out if you’ve not seen it.

Carry on.