Was one of the earlier folks to line up outside the Roxy theater over in West Hollywood. Apparently the Keyclub (or whatever) was having a live concert also, though of the rock/metal sort, seeing as almost everyone in that line was wearing black rock band t-shirts and skinny jeans. Half a block over were the Battlestar geeks– drawing many confusing looks from drivers passing by: Bear McCreary and the The Music of Battle-what?

Saw a few people wearing some fan made BSG shirts. I had expected more but I guess BSG is lacking in the official merchandise department. One said “Frak off!” another was WTFrak, one was a mock up “Baltar is my Homeboy,” and a really great political one that said something like: “ROSLIN AIRLOCK ’08: Simple Solutions for Desperate Times” (Roslin’s airlock fetish does make an inspiring idea for a cartoon) I wish I could have added to the group with a “Launch Vipers!” or a “WW6D?” but schoolwork’s been eating up all my time….I still wanna make one anyway.

So on with the show! Standing wouldn’t have been so bad if only tall people weren’t so….tall. But there were more short/average height people than tall ones so it’s all gooood. Some music videos of the songs were playing on a projection screen with some footage from the show and from the sound stage, which made a nice distraction while we waited and also let us listen to some of the songs on the big speakers that wouldn’t be played live. Finally James Callis comes on the stage to much applause, whoopings, and cat calls (cause he’s frakking hotter in real life than on tv.) He introduces Brendan, Bear’s younger brother, and the opening band who played a few of their own songs as well as a Battlestar inspired one– that didn’t make it to the show………awww. Great performance from them! Then came a 15 minute intersession (huh?) and the video came back on while we waited (“Storming New Caprica”– whoo!)

The musicians finally came back on stage along with James, who introduced Bear to the crowd. Bear took his place by the keyboards and began to perform/conduct. First song was “A Distant Sadness,” with Raya Yarbrough singing the lyrics. She wouldn’t come back on stage til towards the end of the concert with “Lords of Kobol.” Other songs they played (in no particular order) included: Precipice, Baltar’s Dream, Black Market, Roslin and Adama (beautiful!), Wander My Friends (with Brendan doing the vocals and another guest musician playing the Irish pipes–can’t remember his name,) Something Dark Is Coming (Bear said he had to work this one through on his birthday :( ), Gina Escapes, Promise To Return, Wayward Soldier, Fight Night, Dirty Hands, Heeding the Call, and All Along the Watchtower as their final song. James Callis performed as well (as I hoped he would) on the keyboard to his own song, “Spooky.”

There was also a documentary (of sorts) about the…

The Secrets of…

The Behind the Making of…

The Music of…

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

…Revealed.

…Which tracks Bear’s “obscurity” in the Battlestar production team– because there’s no music in Battlestar!– and also his party/popularity woes. Poor Bear kept being referred to as an actual bear, and his music as purely “sound effects.” Meanwhile James runs around trying to cheer up Bear by getting footage of his fellow co-stars to compliment his music…. mostly to reactions of “what music?” or “Bear who?” My favorite retort has to be from Katee Sackhoff: “What drums? I thought that was Eddie banging around behind the set!” Eddie’s “bear” grunts were hilarious and totally random. The ‘one season later’ parody was a great way to end Bear’s party story :)

Soon the finale ended and the players have said their goodbyes and emptied the stage. The applause continued long after they had gone, hoping for an encore. Someone on my side of the room suddenly yelled out “So say we all!” A few people yelled the same. Then about three people yelled at the same time. Before I knew it the entire room was clapping and chanting “So say we all!” A spinning ball light fixture
turned on to keep us going. After what seemed like forever, I heard whoopings from the other side of the room. They gave! and they played Black Market as the encore, which was a great, pumping song to officially end the concert with.

It was an awesome night. It wasn’t epic by any means, but it wouldn’t be as intimate if it were on a huge stage. I hear the last concert they had was smaller. Paul Cartwright was tearing up that electric violin like a starving dog with pork meat sausage… I think it might have caught on fire if his passionate sweat hadn’t been flung around like it did.

Pictures! I’ve blacked out some people’s heads….caus that’s what they looked like to me:

Hope they do another big(ger!) concert in LA again after Battlestar’s series finale! With chairs.

A week or two ago one girl got her car stolen and stripped. Last Sunday a guy got rear ended while he was with friends. Yesterday I was hit by someone merging onto my lane. And today a girl came to class late because her car was crunched by a driver in an SUV talking on the phone on the freeway. She got it pretty bad; she sprained her wrist and also lost a lot of stuff that was in her car including stuff for class which really blows because they took forever to do.
I told my mom this and she told me to start carrying a cow or a snake with me (no, not literally.) According to her feng shui book, carrying an image of a cow or a snake would help keep away bad circumstances or something.

Dug out my cow bell cell phone ornament thingy and tied it to my keys.

I don’t normally believe in all this hocus pocus good luck stuff, but I find feng shui a lot more believable than most other stupid-stitious nonsense… I don’t think it’ll hurt just this once :<

I.Am.So.There.

To hear BSG music live is going to be so frakking awesome. AND it’s during my spring break, so no worries about dragging myself out of bed early the next morning, though I’ll probably be too excited to sleep anyway. I wish I could have discovered BSG earlier. It’d would have been so great to hear “Pegasus” in the  2006 season 2 concert ;(

I need to buy some cd’s to get signed! D: And I need to wear a special BSG shirt there, too! Apparently, James Callis is going to be hosting the concert (is he going to perform, too? I hear he plays guitar well,) but Bear’s written that some other cast and production team members are going to be there as well. If I see Mary there I’m going to scream 8D Maybe I can get people to sign my shirt….

Used dry materials in class with various projects done specifically in one medium: charcoal, conte, and soft pastel

2 minute poses:

Last one’s in pen cause I was sick of charcoal by then. I liked her coat (she also brought in a stuffed camel)

20 minutes:

1 hour compressed charcoal on newsprint:

last one’s got a wonky looking hip and thigh…yeah I know

experiments with new materials before work on longer projects on charcoal paper and newsprint:

2 day compressed charcoal project on white charcoal paper:

Hate the female one. I was at an odd angle and the foreshortening threw me off. I turned in the male one for grading.

2 day white and sanguine conte on honey (tan?) charcoal paper:

Meet Joe (on the right), he has no hair! He looks scary but he’s actually a really nice guy. I just wish he wouldn’t keep dozing off during a pose. The class wanted props that day and when Jim (the instructor) found a skull it was like Tempest meets Hamlet. Decided his pose was too static and turned in the female for grading.

2 day pastel on green charcoal paper:

Jim gave us a theoretically short slide presentation on color theory that kept going off topic. Then he gave us a handout on colors….in black and white xerox.

Final- figure(s) in an extreme environment with collage. Pastel and charcoal on illustration board. Newspaper and paper towel college attached with acrylic ground:

You can tell I was too lazy to do much work on a figure… rubbed my fingers raw on the painfully bumpy surface. I wanted to work more detail on the buildings but it was the day before it was due and stuff kept coming up over the weekend until I had to do this last minute :( Upped the contrast a bit in photoshop

detail:

aaaand an invertebrate:

I don’t wanna kill it– I have no desire to come into contact with dead mice. But I don’t want to let it pass any lethal disease or something onto anyone, or (god forbid!) give birth to an army of rodents!

Gonna need to figure out a way to get rid of it….then for some hardcore mid-winter spring cleaning.

Ugh.

So what did I do for my Christmas holiday? Stuff my face with food, obviously. A great buffet deal at Red Rock casino, a few minutes drive from the Strip. Just as good as any buffet there, but for a fraction of the price! Tried a chimichanga– I didn’t know what a chimichanga was, and didn’t even know they had chimichangas until this lady in front of me went “Ooh! Chimichangas!” Of course, I don’t depend on what a chef in a casino buffet makes as authentic ethnic foods, but I’m guessing it’s like a Mexican eggroll only with fried tortillers instead of wonton wrappers. Also ate like, 3 fresh-from-the-oven pineapple buns from this Chinese place.

Aside from food gorging, there was also a lot of shuffling through crowds at holiday displays and shops. I also noticed a lot more high rise condominiums built/being built, as well as an entire residential center under construction next to the Bellagio, and suburban neighborhoods popping up all around. Wynn’s second hotel building also under construction and an entirely new section of the forum shops as Caesar’s. Vegas is growing– fast.

Worst part of the trip had to be on Christmas eve when someone decided to do some last minute holiday shoplifting in my hotel room. Thief went off with my outdated, soon-to-be obsolete iPod (along with my new headphones!), but left my charger alone, and took some change left on the table. Aside from that, nothing else was stolen. Kicked the sofa too hard, in reaction to this. Resulted in sore big toe the rest of the night. Sympathized with couple I saw the day before with their expensive looking laptop bag and hoped nobody “picked” it up.

Christmas day: Had nothing to do before heading over to Wynn to see La Rêve, so we just went out to eat some more. Went to a sushi buffet and met a lady there who apparently had been going to the restaurant for years. She said the trick is to get there in the “second wave.”

As for La Rêve itself, I would describe it as artsy-fartsy circus/dance acrobatics in and around a pool. Yeah. Gross simplification there but I’m not going into detail about it. The style itself is very surreal, as it supposedly takes place in a dream. No plot or dialogue at all except in some comic sketches, which were very funny. It was more of an exploration of what you can do with a group of acrobats and synchronized swimmers in flowing costumes, suspended on wires in a circular pool featuring a complex hydraulic stage. They must have the best job in the world.

Hope your Christmas feast settled well! I’m in need of a mad detox, myself. The New Year is coming in less than a week so brace yourselves!

The extended version answered some (but not all) of the questions I had while watching the TV version of Razor. The extra scenes revealed more of Shaw and Cain’s past, which I think would have cleared up some confusion in the TV version. Critical me says that it was all a marketing gimmick, to confuse fans who watch it on TV, who did not pre-order it beforehand, and to make them have to buy the dvd in order to see the select juicy bits of the show…of which I am guilty. I’m hoping a soundtrack will be released for Razor also; I find Shaw’s theme very catchy. More erhu sounds on this episode, especially since they’ve introduced it in the third season. I kind of miss the rock sounds of season two; I found the guitar themes to be very characteristic of the Pegasus and her crew.

The scene with Lt. Shaw on the Caprica transfer station just before the Second Cylon Attack was not entirely too interesting, though it did flesh out more of Shaw’s background as the daughter of Quorum delegate, Marta Shaw, and her career goal for Fleet Command after “baby-sitting Cain.” This cleared up the confusion I had of Cain’s remark on Shaw’s mother having “pulled a few strings,” literally giving her a position as Cain’s aide. This reminds me of Cain’s own ascension through the ranks not only by military prowess, but through her own resources and networking.

I found it interesting that Shaw was used as the protagonist in this episode. I thought that we would see things through the eyes of Cain, but I think that would have limited our view to only what happened to her and what she did before her death. By taking Shaw’s perspective, we see not only that but also of “Cain’s legacy” and how she affected the crew on both Pegasus and Galactica.

One of my favorite scenes is definitely the one where Helena berates Kendra’s untimeliness with her morning-coffee, haul-your-ass-out-of-here-if-you-can’t-do-your-job schtick. Listening to the commentary, it turns out that everything that occurred after Kendra leaves the CIC was pure improv on Forbes’ part: she checks to see if Jacobsen (Shaw) has left the room and then, smirking at the cracked up Col. Belzen (Bacic), calls her “a little mid-morning snack.”

The extra footage of the Cylon attack on the Scorpion Fleet Shipyard was intense. Very epic. Reminded me of that very badass scene of Galactica plummeting down from the atmosphere in “Exodus.”

The scene with Husker in the battle over a planet in the first Cylon War was great, too. I’m still surprised they found someone who looks and talks just like Olmos. The screaming over the wireless as the Columbia was blown up was a great touch in adding a personal effect during the chaotic battle scene. And what could be better than a free falling, one-on-one fight with a classic Centurion (“this cocksucker’s mine!”)?

It was Helena Cain’s flashback of her own experience during the first Cylon war (which, in context, occurred at the same time as ‘Husker’ Adama’s) that was truly what I was looking for, but did not find, in the TV version: What drove Cain to become as ruthless as she did? Leaving her little sister in the middle of the firefight and then ducking into a fallout shelter to avoid danger, Helena is nevertheless found by a passing Centurion. Picking up a pocket knife from the ground, Helena abandons her fear and prepares to fight in desperation. The Centurion receives a message of the armistice and leaves the shelter without harming Helena. As Helena emerges from the shelter to find her sister, she finds that she is gone; most likely taken by the Cylons for their hybrid experimentations.

This short tidbit was all I needed to know to get an idea of what kept lurking in the back of Helena’s mind, even before the Second Cylon attack: the guilt of leaving her sister to fend for herself, because she would not risk her own life to save her, and then her last desperate stand against a Centurion, armed only with a knife and her hate for all Cylons, all echoing the theme of choices, how we must live with them, and how they ultimately affect our very identity

Surfing around the internet, I’ve found that most people tend to view Cain as this murderous, psychopathic bitch whom Adama should never have sympathized with. However, Adama himself initially wanted to pursue warfare against the Cylons and had Roslin not intervened and reminded him of the importance of the survival of the human race, he would probably have gone down the same path as Cain. If I had not been watching this show closely enough, I would not have figured that the writers of the show always try to portray as many sides of a character as possible. There is no leaning towards a “good guy vs. bad guy” mentality in the show, and when I first saw Cain in the episodes “Pegasus” and “Ressurection Ship,” I knew there had to be more to her than the sadistic hard ass we all know and love.

Admiral Cain’s behavior had puzzled me before; she always seemed to be doing the opposite of what she was saying. She persisted in her all-out attack, though heavily outnumbered, against the Cylon relay station– despite her previous reassurance to her officers that lives and resources would not be wasted in the name of vengeance (which was all that drove her, really), shooting her own friend and XO in the head the very next day. Her questionable order to plunder the resources of the fifteen civilian ships, to shoot the family members of any civilian who refuses to board the Pegasus against orders, and stranding the fleet without their FTL drives. And finally her talk with Kendra Shaw, to never look back on the past (which she herself has been doing ever since), that to survive in war is to abandon one’s humanity, if one has any hopes of ever becoming “simply human again.”

What I believe happened is that Cain most certainly did lose her perspective, as Forbes mentioned in an interview. Her overwhelming guilt of abandoning her own family on Tauron never left her, as if believing that she killed her sister herself. Indeed, she purposely reminds herself every single day since that time through her ritual carrying of the pocket knife wherever she goes, possibly as an act of repentance. Since the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, her guilt had turned to a lust for vengeance, triggering the hate she had felt at the Cylons and at herself.

In the film commentary, I remember hearing either Moore or Taylor mentioning that she continually lies to herself, as seen in the dinner scene and during her promotion of Lt. Shaw to Captain. Perhaps this is her way of reminding herself of her own faults, by verbally saying what sort of things she ought to be thinking or feeling. I believe this to be another one of her rituals in her wish for repentance, the pocket blade being the other. The blood scraping with the blade by both Helena and Kendra is, what I think, not only just a fancy transition for a flashback. but also signify their trying to scrape clean of the blood from their hands, through the act of being a Razor. Of course, scraping blood off your hands with a Razor would only draw more blood; this time, it would be your own, not somebody else’s. Despite her efforts, her guilt becomes a poison, and that is what led to her destructive behavior- Gina’s betrayal fell on her like a ton of bricks and totally rocked her to the core, but was not the actual root of the weed.

In fact, I wonder whether Cain would have called off the attack on the Cylon Relay had Gina been in CIC with her. Would her feelings for Cain override her Cylon programming (like Athena) and force her to intervene; to make Cain think of the wellbeing of the ship over a personal vendetta? If Gina had not been caught as a Cylon, would she have stopped Cain from plundering the civilian fleet, and then abandon them? Would Helena have learned to let go of her guilt if Gina, or even Kendra, had stepped up to slap her to her senses, as Roslin did for Adama? Why didn’t she kill Adama after the destruction of the resurrection ship? What went through her mind as Gina raised her gun to shoot her?

Questions to answers we’ll never know.

but I doubt they would be as fresh.

The pilot did seem sort of rushed; everything flew by so quickly; but then I had to remember that the pilot had to make a good first impression.

Shame the show never took off, it definitely had the potential to be big (or global, hehe). I read that Warner Bros. stuck to its decision to pass it off even though GF’s fan base was already very well established and wanted more. Unfortunately, because the pilot was never supposed to be released to the public (it was leaked via bittorrent, whew), WB took it’s leaked status as an insult from a fan base full of pirates and further reestablished their decision to keep it from ever being aired. I don’t know what stubborn old fart made that decision, maybe it was because it was of a sci-fi genre or the fact that it was an adaptation from an indie comic series, but they’ve just sent the message that they don’t care what the audience wants but what the audience should like, according to their terms. Oh, and the money thing as well. Gotta have money. It’s all a business in the end, after all.

Still, I really wish someone would have the gutsiness (and the resources) to pick up the show and get it off the ground as a television series.

But enough talk of evil corporations out to control our minds…

I pre-ordered Battlestar Glactica: Razor over the weekend on Amazon.com and I’m hoping it will come in soon. I watched the 2-hour special at my uncle’s place already but I really, really wanted the dvd. Apparently the dvd has got all the deleted scenes they took off of the TV version, and I’ve heard it’s got scenes with Helena Cain in her childhood (I spotted “Young Cain” in the credits). Plus, the cover’s got a great shot of Forbes :D Yep, finally something to look forward to, aside from finals coming up (and we all love finals).

Okay now for the Michelle Forbes raving: She is an amazing actress! She definitely deserves more recognition. I personally admire her conviction to really analyze and portray different characters in different settings, rather than stick with one genre and one (type of) character:

“However, I had to make a choice that felt right for me, which was a difficult one, especially as a young actor being offered a steady job.”

“As an actor, you want as much variety as you can muster up. Otherwise you just keep playing the same chord over and over again.”

Though I have to say she does have a bit of typecast as an assertive, authoritative female, but the world’s going to see more of those sort of characters anyway, so might as well get it started sooner than later. I hear she’s working on the new HBO series, based off of the hit original series in Israel, In Treatment. According to her, her character is totally different from Cain. I’ve only ever seen Forbes portray the assertive, leader-type characters in Global and BSG, so I’d really like to see her play some other role.