Battlestar Galactica ended its run last spring, but the show had one more hurrah: a made-for-Sci-Fi TV movie, The Plan, depicting the events from the miniseries and first two seasons from the perspective of the Cylon agents within the Rag Tag Fleet of survivors. Although the air date was postponed until 2010, the uncut DVD was released last week.

For those who aren’t familiar with BSG, real quick now: the Cylons were created by the human settlers on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. The Cylons developed sentient thought, and rebelled against their captors. There was a war, and it ended when the Cylons left to create their own society. Forty years later, they came back and launched a nuclear holocaust. Fifty thousand people — out of fifty or sixty billion — survived, and, in a fleet led by the last surviving Battlestar, the Galactica, made their way into the depth of space looking for the 13th Colony: Earth, all while being pursued by the Cylon forces.

During the series’ opening credits, a tag would explain all of this, and then explain that the Cylons “have a plan.”

And if you’re reading this on a viewer, this is the point where you should worry about getting spoilers for The Plan. If you’re reading this on my blog, click at your own risk. (more…)

Despite having far too many beers at Brickskeller last night*, I managed to get back to my apartment to tune into ABC’s remake of “V”, the classic sci-fi NBC miniseries from the early 1980s. Here’s my quick reaction: Meh.

(Yes, this includes moderate spoilers, please be careful when reading.) (more…)

But it wasn’t just boys behaving badly, there were girls, too, but before you start picturing sexy stuff, this was the sort of behavior that made me want to throw people over that Walt Whitman pit at the Q Street Dupont Metro entrance.

But I’ll get back to that momentarily.

My Office offers Flex-Time, with the condition that employees must be in the office from 10am until 3pm. I come in by 7, and I leave at 3. Actually, I usually leave a couple of minutes before 3:00, because I don’t want to have to wait for a bus. Why? Tenleytown Metro station. I want to be on a train that passes through Tenleytown before school lets out, because if I’m not?

Well, if I’m not the last several stops of my commute home (or to the Bookstore) will be nerve wracking, with middle school students screaming at the top of their lungs, throwing things, being rude and disrespectful to each other and to the other commuters, and fighting each other. Really, it’s enough to make me want to sterilize everyone, and I think anyone who’s ever been on a Metro train with these kids know what I’m talking about.

Sometimes I think I’ve just become a curmudgeonly old man, scoffing at kids: “I never acted that way in school! I had to walk ten miles uphill in the snow!”

But other times I think, even in high school, on that big yellow bus, we never behaved like this. Or maybe we did and I’ve just forgotten.

Anyway.

I exited the train at Dupont Station and made my way to the Q Street exit, which has nice benches and offers fantastic people watching opportunities, far better than the 19th Street entrance. I alternated people watching with my current read, a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Caleb Carr, The Italian Secretary. The down escalator was broken, and I mentally scoffed at tourists who started to descend, changed their minds, and went looking for the elevator.

If you’re familiar with that exit, the elevator is on the far side of the granite wall, opposite the escalators, and just next to where I was leaning against said wall. Around 4:20 or 4:30, the elevator was packed. A group of kids — I want to say high school age — were hanging around at the elevator. People on the elevator asked if they wanted to board, but one said no. As the doors began to close, one kid — a big fat ass in a blue shirt — who had been hiding on the north wall of the elevator (the doors face east), leaned across the wall and hit the call button, causing the doors to open.

And he continued to do this. Several times.

Until a really big angry man got off the elevator and started calling the police. Then they scattered and the people in the elevator were able to descend. I don’t know how comfortable they were on the platform, since big fat ass went charging down the escalator, possibly trying to intercept and harass them.

Meanwhile, I was thirty feet away listening to my iPod and watching this kid’s behavior and not confronting him. Heck, I could’ve at least taken his photo and posted it to this blog to shame him. I mean, that would probably be pretty difficult — I doubt he’s capable of shame, with the way he acted.

Or maybe he’s just a kid, being kind of stupid in that way he’ll look back on in ten years, shaking his head and wondering why he’d ever be capable of acting that way.

In any case, the rest of the night was great – I met up with a coworker, and I introduced him to Meiwah, and he introduced me to Brickskeller.