For What Died the Sons of Roslin?

Listening to an entirely Irish playlist now--Pogues, Dubliners, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, and, of course, Morrissey. He's got Irish blood, you know. There's no one on Earth he's afraid of.

I'm going to my parents' house for Saint Patrick's Day--I'm bringing my Jameson. The whiskey, not the porn star. But, since I overslept, I don't have much time right now. I actually watched two episodes of Battlestar Galactica last night, fourteen and fifteen. I enjoyed the way the coup resolved, and I enjoyed Baltar and Gaeta's final conversation on a sort of theoretical level--I just can't seem to take Gaeta seriously, his whole story is just a little too melodramatic for me. When Starbuck accused him of whining, I was completely with her. I loved how she and Lee in the mutiny episodes were basically playing their 1978 counterparts, however briefly. Though, to that point, they killed off Richard Hatch, 1978 Apollo himself! Pretty fucked up somehow.

Oh, the episode fourteen I downloaded was also French fansubbed. I noticed "frak" was typically translated as "merde" or "bordel", which was sort of disappointing.

I really laughed when Roslin told Lee she was going to take a less active role now, due to her cancer. Really? Less active than hiding out in Adama's quarters? Sounds like a job in itself.

There was a bit of David Lynch influence in one of the episodes, I forget which it was, when the episode transitioned from one of the show's typical slightly rewritten history recap with a flashing blue light. I've still been watching Revolutionary Girl Utena with breakfast most mornings, and the Lynch influence on that show is getting pretty huge. I read on the wikipedia entry that the show creator dreamed of working with Lynch one day, but I wondered what the director best known for episodes of Sailor Moon could possibly have taken from the works of David Lynch. The past fifteen or so episodes of Utena, though, which have focused pretty heavily on themes of incest, have borrowed a great deal, especially from Twin Peaks, of the distinctive Lynch cutting styles, character blocking, and Coctaeu-ish love for austere and theatrical ornamentation. The past few episodes even seem to have an ongoing reference to Mr. Eddie from Lost Highway.

None of it has quite the feel of authentic emotion of a real Lynch film, but none of Lynch's imitators do, and he certainly has a lot of imitators. I think it's like Akira Kurosawa's action sequences--Kurosawa made great action sequences, but he hated violence. I think a lot of great artists are able to take what they hate or fear and make something beautiful out of them, and their imitators just try to recreate the beauty without really connecting to the original motivation. I mean, they may agree some violence is terrible, and they may be trying to use Kurosawa's or Lynch's technique to convey the terror they genuinely feel, but the problem is they're more focused on the technique than the message.

Anyway, I'd better go. In case you're among the swiftly decreasing number of people who don't know what Bea Arthur has to do with the Star Wars cantina, here's this bit from a 1978 treasure that haunts George Lucas more every year;