Bring Back Fat Apollo!

by von

If you want politics, go here (Andrew on the Fairness Doctrine) or here (Hilzoy on Hillary).  If you want to bs about today's games, go here.  If you want to gamble on the Cornerites, Publius is your man.  By popular demand, however, this is your Battlestar Galactica Open Thread.  Use it wisely.

Because of the Colts game, I'm DVR'ing my BSG fix for tomorrow.  So, to avoid spoilers, I'll not be patrolling comments.  Play nice.

I'll leave you with a few thoughts:

Number Six in Playboy?  The fifteen-year old nerd in me rejoices.  (OK, OK, the nearly-thirty-three-year-old nerd in me is also relatively positive on the subject.)

Is anyone else thinking that we've been a while since a supporting character has died?  My bets are on Galen or Anastasia taking the hit for the dramatic team.

And bring back fat Apollo!  That was the worst training montage since The Karate Kid.  (Granted, the 'Kid also had the All-Valley Karate Tournament montage -- perhaps the best film montage of all time).  Alternatively, if anyone knows how Apollo managed to drop 45 pounds in thirty seconds of screen time and about a month of "show time" (judging from the storyline), let me know.  I could stand to lose a few as well.

Comments

[profbacon]

1. Nude, lots of t&a, but not a glimpse of the secret garden

2 They just killed Kat 2 episodes ago, it just feels longer.

3. In the future they have super diet pills that actually work

[spartikus]

Alternatively, if anyone knows how Apollo managed to drop 45 pounds in thirty seconds of screen time and about a month of "show time"

Phentermine

[hilzoy]

Enormous ravenous tapeworms.

[dutchmarbel]

Rope jumping. Lots and lots of it. And dieting ;)

[Abby Normal]

Number Six in Playboy?

here

http://celebrity-inc.blogspot.com/2007/01/tricia-helfer-does-playboy.html

Your welcome

[Tim]

Alternatively, if anyone knows how Apollo managed to drop 45 pounds in thirty seconds of screen time and about a month of "show time"

Cylon Richard Simmons.

[CaseyL]

Tim, you frighten me. Now I can't get that image out of my head.

[CaseyL]

Speaking of Apollo...

A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday -- the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman Empire in the fourth century.

For the organizers, who follow a calendar marking time from the first Olympiad in 776 B.C., the ceremony was far more than a simple re-creation.

"We are Greeks and we demand from the government the right to use our temples," said high priestess Doreta Peppa.

Ellinais was founded last year and has 34 official members, mainly academics, lawyers and other professionals. It won a court battle for state recognition of the ancient Greek religion and is demanding the government register its offices as a place of worship, a move that could allow the group to perform weddings and other rites.

The story's at CNN.

I thought it was interesting because Americans' reviving (reinventing) ancient Celtic paganism is just part of the whole New Age thing, and Australians getting their country to recognize 'Jedi' as a religion is just Aussie whackiness.

But... Greeks? Bringing back the Olympian deities?

That, to quote the old Washington Mutual Bank commercial, is something you don't see every day.

Greeks aren't, SFAIK, the most fanciful people out there, much less the most 'out there' people out there. So reviving worship of the Olympians seemed a little more, I don't know, significant than Americans runnin' around naked worshipping the Goddess(es) or Aussies going at each other with light sabers.

(It also puts me in mind of one of Harlan Ellison's stories, where he said that gods die when their worshippers vanish. He was writing about new gods we create with our desires - all cruel monstrous ones, but that's Harlan for you - but I wonder if, under that logic, old gods come back when they get new worshippers. And are they the same as they were, or, like the reinvented rituals and prayers, are they New and Improved: less capricious, more compassionate, that sort of thing?)

[spartikus]

Now that I've seen the new episode, not only bring back fat Apollo, bring back the old writers too. Not terrible, but it's disappointing to see yet another show return from the high heights to the realm of merely "solid TV".

[Francis]

nuthin else to do.

you and me, we drive to and from work, practice law, cuddle the spouse, make dinner, do chores ...

apollo, he's got 14 hours a day to work out once he cratered his ship.

[tarylcabot]

damn fine episode, but can't believe that they really off'd Xena. does she come back as an image in Baltar's mind? and how will Gauis squirm his way out of being a prisoner back on board BSG? will BSG start heading towards earth? will 6 put out a Playboy calendar on board to save her life? i sure hope that we get some of these questions answered & don't have to sit through some soap opera about kara & dee & apollo & kara's hubby.

NFL: happy that a Manning is finally going to the Super Bowl - sorry that the Saints lost - but will cheer for a New Orleans born QB to lead the Colts to victory.

[Anarch]

CaseyL: You need to read Terry Pratchett's "Small Gods" if you haven't already done so. Stat.

Also: are spoilers for Rapture, the episode that aired last night, permissible on this thread or should I wait a few days?

[Slartibartfast]

Nanobot liposuction.

[tarylcabot]

Anarch - i took von's comment

to avoid spoilers, I'll not be patrolling comments

to mean that posting spoilers was o.k. since von would not look at comments until after watching BSG - sometime today presumably.

so is Xena really out of the show?

[Anarch]

Looks it (for now). No-one's entirely sure why; I assume it was a money thing but I haven't heard confirmation.

[spartikus]

She's been "boxed out" and put into cold storage....which means they can bring her back. And I predict they will before the end of the season.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I know that Neil Gaiman is a love him or hate him kind of author (which I don't really understand because I think he is so clearly a good author) but if you are going to enjoy the theme of what happens to old gods as they lose followers and the existance of new gods, you really should read his "American Gods".

And Charles de Lint is of course wonderful on the topic, though that reccommendation is more problematic. De Lint sometimes has more the feel of a chronicler or collector of stories about a fictional city rather than an author. (And that is meant as a compliment even though it probably doesn't sound like it). But as such, in my mind the individual novels don't really exist. I think of the city and characters as revealed by all his books, and I don't really fix in my mind what happened in what book, or which individual stories were good and which were bad. He is really the only author who does that for me.

I do know that the first of his books I read was "Memory & Dream". I suppose it is technically in the magical realism vein, but it really impacted me more than any book I'd read near the time. Hmm, but that particular book doesn't really deal with the dead gods theme, so I'm REALLY drifting here. :)

[CaseyL]

Tery Pratchett I simply adore and,yes, I have read "Small Gods." Not for a while, though, and I don't remember anything about it unprompted, so obviously a re-reading is in order.

de Lint is also someone I like, though in terms of stories set in Fey-touched cities, I much prefer Borderland (Windling, Bull, Shetterly, et al - and, oh yes, John M Ford's unique spin on Borderland) because they're less dreamy.

Gaiman... is someone I've yet to be able to read more than 10 pages of. And I can tell you why: it's the unrelieved bleakness. He's a marvelous writer, a terrifically talented artist, etc etc, but I just can't take that much hopelessness.

[Stealth]

Is anyone else thinking that we've been a while since a supporting character has died?

Er, Kat?

[LizardBreath]

Gaiman... is someone I've yet to be able to read more than 10 pages of. And I can tell you why: it's the unrelieved bleakness. He's a marvelous writer, a terrifically talented artist, etc etc, but I just can't take that much hopelessness.

I'd give him another shot -- while some of his stuff (the short stories particularly, and maybe the comics: I've read very little of those) is bleak, the novels I've read are full of relief on the bleakness front. Good Omens is a collaboration with Pratchett, and is as funny as you would expect, but American Gods is funny too, and is certainly not hopeless.

[gwangung]

Gaiman... is someone I've yet to be able to read more than 10 pages of. And I can tell you why: it's the unrelieved bleakness. He's a marvelous writer, a terrifically talented artist, etc etc, but I just can't take that much hopelessness.

Blink, blink.

Hrm. Of all the adjectives I'd use with Gaiman, hoplessness and bleakness are about at the bottom of the list.

On the other hand, that may be because of where I first encountered him (mainly in the comics field)(but his prose has never struck me as bleak and hopeless....)

[tarylcabot]

CaseyL: Will second the recommendation & suggest that you try American Gods. I enjoyed it so much that I made a point of visiting The House on the Rock when I visited my sister in Plattville. Also enjoyed his kids story The Wolves in the Wall quite a bit and plan to read it to my son when he's a bit older.

Did you ever try Sandman comics?

[geoffyb]

Hmm... I actually liked American Gods the least of Gaiman's books. I found it much bleaker than much of his previous writing - and in fact, the way the story began pretty much killed the rest of the book for me.

That said, I wouldn't characterize his work as particularly hopeless - in fact, I'd say most of his pieces are darkly hopeful (although individuals may suffer unpleasant fates).

[No Longer a Urinated State of America]

"I thought it was interesting because Americans' reviving (reinventing) ancient Celtic paganism is just part of the whole New Age thing, and Australians getting their country to recognize 'Jedi' as a religion is just Aussie whackiness.

But... Greeks? Bringing back the Olympian deities?"

Err...might be a certain xenophobic nationalism behind it: c.f. Asratu (revival of worship of Odin) is strongly associated with white nationalism. [And both Asratu and neo-paganism based on the Olympian Gods would suffer because we have no idea of the liturgy and theology behind the religions: the myths don't really give us much clue.]

Celtic religious revivalism is just synthetic shite [even more than Asratu and neo-Olympianism], as I once managed to get a Celtic pagan to admit in a forum on Irish culture. There's no cosmology in the mythology that's passed down to us, and the Invasion myth cycle [which has the most on the Celtic gods - the other myths are hero tales] is contradictory in the extreme. So self-styled pagans have to Make Stuff Up, e.g. by mashing Celtic gods together with borrowings from Hinduism, on the basis that the ancient Celts and the Hindus were both IndoEuropean polytheistic societies [which to me makes as much sense as reconstructing Episcopalianism from Sufism as they're both versions Abrahamic monothesisms.] There's nothing wrong with this practice, but fooling yourself that you're connecting with a "Celtic" tradition is befuddling yourself in the extreme. It's as authentically Celtic as the leprechaun on the Lucky Charms box and green beer on St. Patrick's Day.

[There's much bitching and moaning from such self-styled Celtic pagans about censorship by the Irish monks who recorded what Irish mythology we have, neglecting the fact that 'cos the Druid and Bardic castes were oral traditions, without the Xtain monks we'd have *nothing*.]

Sorry to rant on about this.

[rilkefan]

Interesting more-in-sadness comment on RedState.

[Prodigal]

Cylon Richard Simmons.

Mr. Burns is on one of the ships in theremainder of the colonial fleet? Whod'a thunk it?

I can't agree with the argument of Gaiman being bleak, because Sandman had some amazingly uplifting stories in it. "The Sound of Her Wings" is achingly beautiful, and my most recent rereading of "Three Septembers And A January" has left me resolute to take Februay 1st as a floating holiday if I ever wind up working at a place that offers them again. Also, "Ramadan" speaks of he value of finding hope in the worst circumstances - which is particularly poignant in light of the second military action of America against Iraq. A Game Of You likewise delivers beauty amongst its horror. I have to second tarylcabot's recommendation of the comics - they're great stuff.

One last note - it's speled "Xian", not "Xtian" - because the "X" is an abbreviation for "Christ". Sorry, just one of those things that, like "ATM Machine" or "PIN Number", gets to me.

[von]

I finally saw the episode last night, and have to agree with the assessment that the writing was not-up-to-par -- although I thought it was still 50% better than most anything on TV (save, perhaps, Extras and The Office). I also want to point out that I was totally, absolutely, positively correct in my prediction that a minorish character would die -- although, unfortunately, I was totally, absolutely, positively incorrect regarding which one.

[von]

Er, Kat?

Speaking of lame episodes, that was nearly the lamest. Take a lame supporting character, give her a lamer backstory, go predictably Starbuck on her, and then give her a lamer heroic ending.

On the other hand, the boxing episode was about 1000x better than it should have been.