Not much to say about tee-vee, I guess...

...except to say that, after a rather head-spinning turn-of-events on the resumption of "Battlestar Galactica's" 2nd season, the series has hit a flat spot. The whole thing with hunting "Scar" was cool, but the other two episodes surrounding it were kind of so-so. There's a lot of worrying out here on the internets about the possibility that the writers are now "just making s* up", as opposed to hanging everything off a decent framework.

In other words, they fear "Galactica" will fall victim to "X-Files" syndrome. A worthy thing to be afraid of.

I don't think it's all that bad. It's just a tad bit dissappointing to slow down so much after having a bunch of consistently jaw-dropping events thrown at you, one after the other.

"Life on Mars" is a bit slow at the moment, too, which is wierd for such a short series. It's like they're side-tracking to explore more of that "it was really different back then, won't it luv?" atmosphere. And yeah, exploring some of Sam's past as well. But again, it's supposed to be a short series, so it's a bit puzzling that it seems to be detouring so blatantly. Maybe it will all tie together at the end...

I'm going to file this next one under "TV" as well instead of "Cinema", even though it will never, ever make it to a normal TV channel in a million years: "The Aristocrats". It's a documentary that interviews dozens of professional comedians and entertainers about an old, shaggy burlesque-era joke that's turned into one of the raunchiest, foul, dirty, disgusting, and totally ad-libbed routines that hardly anyone in the general public had ever heard before. It was pretty much an "inside joke" that comedians would tell other comedians, with their own twisted embellishments. The idea is to make it as sick and perverted as possible, yet make it "one of yours" in the telling.

It's amusing. I'm not a big fan of excessive raunchy jokes, and there's nothing particularly shocking about what happens with this one -- though there's some particularly icky parts. Bleah. But it is more fascinating to watch the dozens of different interpretations and thought-processes that go into it. There's an editing technique used where they quickly intercut between two different cameras during each interview that I found incredibly annoying and distracting, but it's not like this is high-art. An interesting expose, but definitely a one-trick pony.

And no, I'm not going to tell a version of the joke. What, are you kidding?