Get Your NaJuReMoNoMo Awards

Throughout the month I have been floored by the runaway success of National Just Read More Novels Month aka NaJuReMoNoMo. If you haven't been leaving comments in the Kick-Off Post, now is your chance to brag about your success. In a couple of days I will be scouring this post and the earlier one for a list of self-proclaimed winners. If you want to be included just leave a comment with your name or alias or witness protection plan identity, the number of novels you read, and any blog or specific post you want me to link to. It's also never to late to join retroactively. If you read a novel before you even heard of NaJuReMoNoMo and meet all the other rules (mainly it must be fiction and it must be start to finish within January) you can still claim victory. If you have left a comment already, I'll find it, so no need to re-post unless you just want to brag some more. And be sure to pick-up your suitable for framing badges. Winner: Read at least one novel start to finish in January. <a href="http://tinyurl.com/8deaq9"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" width="100" src="http://tinyurl.com/camt3o" border="0" alt="NaJuReMoNoMo" /></a> Green Winner: Three novels <a href="http://tinyurl.com/8deaq9"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" width="100" src="http://tinyurl.com/c6og82" border="0" alt="NaJuReMoNoMo" /></a> Silver Winner: Five novels <a href="http://tinyurl.com/8deaq9"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" width="100" src="http://tinyurl.com/bxkbqw" border="0" alt="NaJuReMoNoMo" /></a> Gold Winner: Ten or more novels <a href="http://tinyurl.com/8deaq9"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" width="100" src="http://tinyurl.com/dznuoo" border="0" alt="NaJuReMoNoMo" /></a> And you can mix and match badges if you are so inclined. For example, eight novels would be a silver and a green. 35 novels would be three golds and a silver. Look for the wrap-up in a few days and congratulations in advance.

Giga-Inauguration Fun

(Click on picture for full image in a browseable new window.) The other day the Achenblog linked to this amazing Gigapan picture of the inauguration ceremony. It is 1,474 megapixels large and was stitched from 220 different images. You can zoom down to the individual person in the crowd. It’s like spying on people. So I screen captured a few familiar and not-so-familiar faces and made some guesses as to what they were saying or thinking at that very moment. Dubya: Can we just get this over with? I have some longnecks in Midland with my name on them that I have to get to. Cheney: I’m going to get that George Bailey if it’s the last thing I do. Michelle: That man is sooooo fine. And he is getting lucky tonight. Bill Clinton: Can anyone see me scoping out Michelle? Hillary Clinton: If you had just kept your big mouth shut, that would have been me. Al Gore: So this is what one of these ceremonies looks like. Enjoy your moment in the sun kid, but call me when YOU have a Nobel Peace Prize. Tipper Gore: Sigh. Would Michelle mind if I ‘borrowed’ him for a night? John Roberts: He’s going to make me do it again. I just know it. John Paul Stevens: Is it safe for me to die now? Clarence Thomas: Wake me when it’s over. Cameraman: Doing the crowd shots at Mardi Gras is much, much better. Guy: Yeah, I know Obama is the other direction. I’ve got four more years of looking at his mug. Girl: How did I even get dragged down here? I could be somewhere warm and indoors instead. Bandmember: Yo-Yo Ma gets to play a backing track, but I’ve gotta hold this brass horn for two hours. Life is not fair. Groupie: Front row center is so worth it. Random Person In Crowd: I got up at 4 a.m. for this view? Secret Service Agent: If anything happens today, we are all so fired. Barack Obama: That is MISTER President to you from now on. BonusTimeWaster™: Find in the giga-image where I took all my captures.

Sally On The Pole

Somehow I missed this Housebroken from last week: I'd definitely put a dollar into a Forth garter. Seems like Hottest Mom is a sure fire category for this year's National Coolest Comics Character Competition. BlatantCommentWhoring™: Start the nominations.

I Choked On...

Who are the Romanovs? Who is Miss Havisham? What is Lake Ontario? Who is Cate Blanchett? Those are four of the questions I know I got wrong on the on-line Jeopardy contestant quiz. But I got Beyonce right for sure.

No Duh News

In further proof that I have waaaay too much time on my hands, I have started yet another blog. Called No Duh News, it is devoted to those news stories that have made me stop in shock and slap my forehead screaming "No Duh!" Or at least mumble "Of course." The format is a blog title that is the headline of an actual news story somewhere, a quote from the article that states something profoundly obvious and a quick sarcastic comment from me. So, it's basically what I do all day long anyways. I started the blog at the beginning of the year as a project in beta. I have redone the template twice and changed the name once (adios, The No Duh Awards which was a take on The Darwin Awards, but I like the succinctness of No Duh News better). For nearly a month now I have managed to find several items a week worthy of my notice. If you haven't been reading it (and absolutely nobody has) you have missed such epic revelations as: Mark McGwire took steroids. Lots of people saw Obama get inaugurated. Teenagers have sex even when they promise not to. The U.S. tortured prisoners. People who drink too much end up having sex. The economy really sucks. Really bad. I mean really, really bad. If your husband dies because you set his genitals on fire, you can be charged with murder. Here's where you come in. First of all, subscribe to the blog because it's mildly amusing, has quick, easy to read posts (which in and of itself is a huge differentiator from Foma*), and you have nothing better to do. Then, e-mail me tips with news stories that have made you go "No Duh!" I have even set up a special e-mail hotline for just that purpose at noduhnews -AT- gmail -DOT- com. And I will be sure to pass along the news and the credit. No duh!

Inauguration Horror Stories

Everyone that attends a presidential inauguration has a horror story. This latest one produced more than the usual number mostly because more people attended than ever. One of the many travesties that occurred is now being called The Purple Tunnel by those that survived it. Thousands of people with tickets for the Purple viewing area were trapped for hours inside a highway underpass tunnel. Marc Lynch of Foreign Policy was there. The Washington Post puts the blame on the Capitol Police for not anticipating the above normal turnout and refusing additional help from the National Guard and volunteers. As a result of institutional pride, many thousands were denied their chance to see this historical event. The best views of the inauguration are held for the roughly quarter million people clever enough to cadge tickets from their congressman and that is why these purple and silver ticket holders that never even made it in the gate are so full of umbrage. Most people just hoofed it in and took their chances with wherever they could get. Josh Fruhlinger, the Comics Curmudgeon and former Jeopardy contestant, gave his first person account of how the hoi polloi saw the ceremony (short version: not very well) to Wonkette and kept up their little running gag of the whole inauguration as being an unmitigated nightmare. After reading the Post article, I'm not sure how much creative license was required. But miserable inaugurations are a time honored tradition. Sue of The Conical Glass tells of seeing Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993 and her only defining memory is: Boy, that was sure cold and boring. I want to find whatever nitwit moved the swearing in from March where the weather in DC is occasionally decent to January when it inevitably inclement. I too went to an inauguration. It was 2001 and the bitter Bush-Gore recount was settled 5-4 just in time for the ceremony. My son was in fifth grade where they used to teach government only to have it moved to third grade while he was in fourth. I took it upon myself to home-school him in a little civics by taking him and a classmate to the inauguration. The ceremony was on a Saturday and I didn’t even have to take off to go to it. My wife cleverly got two tickets from our senator at the time, Paul Sarbanes. Then she got two more tickets in an entirely different viewing area from our congressman Ben Cardin, who is now our senator (And Paul Sarbanes's son, John is now our congressman. Don't talk to me about there not being dynasties in American politics). Unlike the Purple Tunnel of Death experience, the logistics went flawlessly. We took the Metro in and had plenty of time to go over to the Hart Building to get the two tickets that hadn't been mailed to us. But trust me, getting one of those vaunted tickets is no guarantee of a good view. Since we had tickets in entirely different areas, we had to split up, my wife and I each taking one kid. I finally found an section of the roped off area where I could get a view of both the swearing in stage and a video screen without enormous trees in my line of sight. The pictures in this post are from my pre-digital Minolta Maxxum and faithfully capture the ugly dreary day it was. Bitter cold, damp and misty, the ceremony was anti-climatic to say the least. Jumbotron technology was not what it is today and the sound was thin and crackly. I held my son on my shoulders as much as I could. I'm certain one of those people on the stage in the picture is Dubya, but it would take NSA level computers to determine which one. Back in those days it was conceivable to see the ceremony and the parade with just a little hustle. Using cellphones we regrouped somewhere on Pennsylvania to try to see the parade. Nearly all the good vantage points had been taken up by elaborate viewing bleachers that have since been ruled unconstitutional. Much of the rest of the sidewalk was taken up by protestors with clever and sometimes not very child-safe slogans (Puns on 'Bush' when picketing for reproductive rights never get tired). They were far more entertaining than anything else we saw that day. Nevertheless, we used the wedge of two elementary school kids to muscle to the front. After at least another hour in the cold, we saw several limos drive by, one of which might have contained the president. By then the cold mist had grown into a drizzle and we decided to cut our losses. We were on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue and once the parade starts, there is no crossing the street. Even before 9/11, the inauguration security protocol inexplicably calls for the closing of the Smithsonian Metro station. That left Federal Triangle as the only station in service anywhere near us. A human funnel formed just outside the station and once you were in it there was no choice but to get sucked along with it. As seems like a mandatory measure for the Metro, at least one escalator was roped, but the others kept running like a bad I Love Lucy sketch without regard for the lack of space on the platform that it was disgorging riders onto. How we got back to our car at the park-in-ride is one long bad memory that I have suppressed for years. Still, we made it home alive and with the right number and identity of the children we had left with. After that I swore off inaugurations forever and I was not too eager to celebrate anything relating to Bush's second term. I watched Obama get sworn in with about a dozen coworkers in our conference room on a 20” set with snowy rabbit ears. I may not have been part of history but I wasn’t in the Purple Tunnel of Doom either. At least those people have a great story to tell: How I Didn’t See Obama’s Inauguration. Mine isn’t quite as colorful, but equally tragic: I Saw The Worst President In History Get Sworn In BEFORE He Was An Epic Failure.

Bruce Vs. Bono

When I went to the Obama Inauguration Concert on Sunday, the two acts I was most interesting in seeing were Bruce Springsteen and U2. I bought along two pocket digital cameras that both had movie capture modes. After the ceremonial formalities were done, Bruce took the stage with a full gospel choir to play "The Rising" his post-9/11 uplifting anthem. I grabbed my new Canon A590 and let it record. Then near the end of the show, Bono and the boys took the stage for two numbers. I captured the "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" performance on my wife's Panasonic DMC-TZ1. This video is just a little shakier because my hand was a lot more tired and for a little while I was trying to take still photos on my A590 with my left hand. That type of multitasking is a bad idea. The TZ1 has a slightly better zoom, but still not good enough to see what's going on on stage. The first thing I did when I got home that night was download both cameras and put the pictures on Flickr and upload the clips to YouTube. The U2 video went up first and had a half hour head start on the Springsteen one. I gave them both very similar titles, one being "U2 At The Obama Inauguration Concert" and the other was "Springsteen Plays Obama Inauguration Concert". The two videos are of very similar quality, especially after going through the YouTube Flash filter. Amazingly, they are also only one second different in length. The next morning I noticed an odd phenomenon. The Springsteen video had been seen over 1,000 times while the U2 clip only had about a dozen views. That gap has remained steady. As of this morning, it's Bruce-19,122 to Bono-623 and Bruce has gotten another hundred views since I started this post. And I don't even have the most popular Springsteen crowd shot. This video where Bruce is at least a barely distinguishable blur on the stage has over 40,000 views. I have no idea what makes one video more popular than another other than just pure network effect. My little experiment in guerrilla sociological You-Tube viewing doesn't even say anything about the popularity of U2 versus Springsteen since there are clips of U2 with over 35,000 views as well. But no matter what you think of Bruce or Bono, neither can hold a candle to Beyonce: 111,514 views and counting. BlatantCommentWhoring™: Bruce or Bono?

My First LOLPrez

I'm not very well-versed in the LOLcats patois, so I hope I misspelled everything correctly. BlatantCommentWhoring™: Provide your own caption with or without LOLspeak.

Let The Wingnuttery Begin

The recently concluded inauguration was a massive display of the best aspects of American democracy in action. We elected the first African-American in history when just a few decades ago many of his spiritual forebearers couldn't even vote. So on the first day of this new era in history, what is the blogosphere obsessed with? John Roberts and President Obama fumbling through the oath of office. I'm going to let you find your own transcription of what transpired. They are literally everywhere. What's more fascinating is the Zapruder-like (admittedly never a good adjective when discussing presidential events) intensity of the over-analysis. I made my own contribution on the issue on the Achenblog where I made this observation: I am certain that somewhere a wingnut lawyer is preparing a brief claiming that since Obama did not say the words correctly, he isn't really the President. At the same time, there are people furiously blogging that it was a plot by Roberts to make Obama look inarticulate. The great thing about aiming low with your expectations is that you are never disappointed. The first part of my prediction came true nearly instantly as Fox News rose to the occasion (via the LA Times). "Well, again, we're wondering here whether or not Barack Obama in fact is the president of the United States," Chris Wallace told Fox News viewers, well over an hour after Obama had taken the oath of office today. Fox News replayed the swearing-in moment when President Obama and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. each bobbled the words to the constitutional oath. "They had a kind of garbled oath," Wallace said. "It's just conceivable that this will end up going to the courts," Wallace speculated. The problem is that all the wingnuts willing to take on such a suit are still working on their appeals to have Obama declared a foreign citizen ineligible for office, which would make the transposed oath a moot point. As for the more conspiratorial part of my hypothesis, this guy in the comments of an ABCNews blog expanded on it far more thoroughly than I could ever hope to: Roberts sabotaged this historic moment on purpose. Since the first sound recording of a U.S. presidential inauguration, has the CJ ever flubbed the oath before? Roberts is a dyed-in-the-wool partisan and it is no surprise that he would inject a mistake into the oath so that video and sound recordings of this great moment in American history would be marred. This is classic "rat-f*cking" in the grand tradition of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Atwater and Rove. Of course, video of the swearing in will now be unusable in the President's re-election campaign in 2012. It is sad. Roberts displayed his own racism today. Honest Americans should remember this in the future when they vote for their Senators. We need the Senate to approve Justices to the Supreme Court who serve justice, not partisan dirty tricks. This rant would easily be dismissed as whatever the opposite of wingnuttery is if eight years of cynical PR posturing hadn't made it plausible. For the record, I have no doubt that Robert's flub was an honest nervous mistake made by a brilliant legal scholar with a subconscious prejudice against split infinitives. It does, however, call into question his credentials as a strict constructionist. Astoundingly, more than one right wing blogger was quick with the YouTube clips of Dubya's inaugurations to prove that Bush was more eloquent than Obama. That gambit, my friend, is pure unadulterated chutzpah. Note that Rehnquist in all his finest savoyardian frippery paused after the name, which Roberts didn't. I think that is where the whole rhythm of the oath got thrown off. Roberts has already apologized but the conspiratorial-minded point out that Obama as senator voted against Roberts. It's just fascinating that what is just a minor gaffe can be run so quickly through the partisan filter to score quick points. Even Little Green Footballs absolves Obama of any blame, but somewhere the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is opening one sleepy eye waiting to spring into action. I love politics as theater and it is going to be an very entertaining next four years. BlatantCommentWhoring™: What was your favorite part of the inauguration? Update (1/21/09 9:10 EST): Barack and Roberts did it again and got it right this time.

Obamabration

As my last post shows so clearly and definitively, I attended the Inauguration Kick-Off Concert aka ‘We Are One’ yesterday. I had been waffling all week but I finally talked my wife into coming along. Knowing that I had no intention of standing for six hours in the cold to get a front row view, I made a strategic just-in-time schedule. We left the house about 11:30 and drove to the New Carrolton Metro station. The station itself was chaos since nobody seemed to know how to use the ticket kiosks. We grabbed my wife a SmartTrip card and boarded a completely empty car. It stayed nearly empty all the way until L’Enfant Plaza when it completely filled with transfers. We got off at the Smithsonian station Mall exit and joined the general herd of people heading west. Along the way we passed all sorts of vendors sell every imaginable type of souvenir. It’s good to see the entrepreneurial spirit alive and well. We crested the hill that the Washington Monument is on (which was well guarded by a highly armed SUV) to see the Promised Land only to not quite make it. Right beside the World War II Memorial was a security screening tent but the line for it wrapped up towards Constitution. Right there was also the end of the line for another screening tent along the south side of Reflecting Pond area. That line moved briskly, but it stopped cold after about five minutes. By now it was about 1:30. Someone wandered by saying they had stopped letting people in. We abandoned the line and went with Plan B. We headed back to the hill of the Washington Monument. What had been a stream of pedestrians fifteen minutes earlier was now a crowd waiting for the concert to start. We picked our way through the throng until we reached a place where both the Lincoln Memorial and a huge Jumbotron were visible. From there we hunkered down and waited. Just before 2 o’clock they started showing pre-recorded warm-up clips of Obama on his train ride and performers preparing for the show. Just a little before the official 2:30 start time, the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson came out and gave a wonderfully nuanced invocation. I can’t do it justice, but the full text is here. Then the guests of honors arrived to fanfare (of the common man) and sat on the side of the stage. Bruce opened with a gospel-choir backed performance of “The Rising.” You really couldn’t see anything on the stage from where we were except for a band of red where the choir stood, but the video screen was fine for watching the show and the sound was booming. You can get the whole thing on HBO.com so I won’t recap it all here, but let it suffice to say that the atmosphere was electric. The show was well-paced and highly diverse. There was gospel and rock and soul and classical and even country performers. After what happened to the Dixie Chicks, you have to give credit to Garth Brooks for showing up which is why he might have gotten the longest set. In fairness, Jennifer Nettles is lead singer of the country band Sugarland, so that made for two representatives of both kinds of music. Also one of Garth’s songs was “Shout” which was done originally and better than The Beatles by The Isley Brothers. One of my audience neighbors was mentioning that to someone and I confirmed the trivia. One of these guys had come from California but cheered whenever Chicago was mentioned. Also, Bettye LaVette was a big hit with the African-American women of a certain age dressed in their finest Sunday furs surrounding us. And Denzel Washington drew sighs of appreciation from the distaff half of the audience. His appeal is truly pan-racial. There was a lot of understated symbolism in the show. A lot of the songs were about America even if I don’t think of “Little Pink Houses” and “American Pie” as patriotic flag-waving numbers. The most subtle point was that after a poignant clip piece on Marian Anderson who had sung at the Lincoln Memorial after being blackballed by the DAR at Constitution Hall, Josh Groban and Heather Headley (Tony Award winner for the titular role in Aida) sang “"My Country 'Tis of Thee", the same song Marian Anderson sang. The nattily dressed men backing them up were members of the Gay Mens Chorus of Washington. U2 was the only group to play as a full band even though the pit orchestra included a full rock set-up. And Obama brought down the house. He very nearly upstaged Beyonce who did the closing version of “America The Beautiful”. The show ended at 4:30 sharp and the vast exodus began. Rather than rush the crowded Metro station, we strolled down to the Smithsonian Castle to take our first bathroom break in six hours. Not that we couldn’t have stopped along the way. The entire Mall is literally walled in with portajohns for the big day. And dozens of video and sound towers have appeared like fifty foot tall mushrooms. From there we leisurely strolled the length of the Mall and caught the Capitol building all festooned with flags in the twilight. Just past Capitol Hill we waited about a half hour for a table at congressional aide hangout Tortilla Coast. While waiting we overheard some people with a horror story about having a hard time getting out of the Metro station because of so many people getting in. By the time dinner was done it was 7:30 and the Orange line was empty again as we headed home. Once home, we replayed the HBO broadcast to see if we missed anything. The images looked sharper on the hi-def HBO broadcast than the monster jumbotron, but HBO’s sound surprisingly had more drop-outs than we had heard live. Sure we could have stayed at home and watched it but it’s the difference between being at Woodstock and renting the movie. When history is being made, you just have to be there. BlatantFlickrPlugging™: As usual, lots more pictures can be found here.

Obama and Me and 500,000 of His Closest Friends

I was on HBO today: More pictures and video to come.

Spoiler Warnings

In my Battlestar Galactica/L-Word post, I used plot information from the season finale of the third season of Battlestar Galactica in the text. This information was crucial for the point I was making in the post. Loyal reader 2fs took me to task for not including a Spoiler Warning. I was astounded that he thought it needed one. The season three finale aired in the US on March 5, 2007 and in the UK on May 1, 2007. Moreover, the opening sequence of every Season 4.0 episode (which aired in the spring of last year and was issued on DVD before Christmas) revealed this point. If someone didn't know about it, it wasn't for lack of opportunity. I've added a spoiler warning to the post, but you can't unring a bell, so I apologize. Over the years I have wondered what is the mandatory spoiler warning time for a movie or TV show. In real life, I frequently ask people if it is okay or not to reveal a storyline when we are discussing something. With the situation reversed, I usually wave off spoiler rights unless I have concrete imminent plans to see the work in question. With box sets and DVRs, the window of opportunity to see something is very elastic. I frequently DVR stuff and watch it in batches. I have the entire season so far of Heroes recorded and I may never get to it. Every commercial for the show includes elements that would count as a spoiler to me, but that isn't NBC's fault. It would be unreasonable for me to expect the entire world to stay silent because I'm too busy to watch it. Spoilers are a long and venerable tradition. National Lampoon used to carry a column called "Spoilers" that had one sentence summaries of the endings of movies in current release. I have no idea how many movies have been "spoiled" for me by Mad Magazine. You can't parody something without revealing the plot. Stephen King is quoted in Wikipedia as saying there is no such thing as a spoiler, the work should stand or fail even if you know the ending. Still, some sensitivity should be exercised and a certain blackout period should be honored. My worst fail in this regard was on the opening day of Star Trek II: The One Where Spock Dies. It had been widely reported in the general press that Spock died and how controversial that was. The newspaper review that morning had let on that Spock died. As we were walking out of the theater there was a huge line of people there to see the next show. A complete stranger asked me how it was. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Spock dies." People all around us sighed crestfallen. I had done a Very Bad Thing by not recognizing that others weren't as media-aware as I was and didn't know that Spock dies in the movie they were about to see. Ooops! The previous paragraph should have had a spoiler warning. Otherwise people might learn that Spock died. My personal rule of thumb for spoilers is one month for movies and one week for television shows but even that is a little flexible. The bigger the surprise the longer it should be kept secret. In reverse, the more popular the event, the less caution is required. Almost by definition, the result of a massive cliffhanger can't be considered a spoiler after it has aired. Who wasn't discussing Who Shot JR the very next day? Since opinions vary, I have started a poll to see if I am alone in this stance. Now that that is over, read no further if you don't want have other items spoiled for you. SPOILERS BELOW ***spoiler space*** ***spoiler space*** Spoilers start here: The final cylon is Tom Zarek's brother Muffit, played by Dirk Benedict. The kid is really a ghost and Bruce Willis was the one who killed him. Rosebud was Charles Foster Kane's nickname for his penis. Obi-Wan Kenobi is really Luke's dad. There are a few things Queen Padmé Amidala hid from Anakin. The island disappeared because Gilligan turned the wheel on the hatch after the Skipper told him not to. BlatantSpoilerWhoring™: Spoil something for me.

Battlestar L-Word

The following post contains plot elements from Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Do not read if you don't know who the four secret Cylons are. Two of my favorite cult TV shows are returning for their final season this weekend. Each features hard-hitting ripped-from-the-headlines controversial storylines. Both are also complicated serial dramas with large casts and intertwining relationships that can confuse the viewer who is not up on all the backstory. While they may not seem that similar at first, they are more alike than most people realize. To the casual channel flipper, separating the two shows may be troublesome if you didn't know how to tell them apart. Here is my guide: Battlestar Galactica The L-Word Cast Photo Premise A motley assortment of preternaturally attractive astronauts search the galaxy for the lost colony of Earth. A motley assortment of preternaturally attractive lesbians search Los Angeles for love and sex. Episodes Remaining 10 8 Final Season Mystery Who is the Final Cylon? Who killed Jenny Schecter? Parental Figure As commander of the Battlestar Galactica, Admiral Adama is the patriarchal figure that everyone brings their problems to. As the owner of The Planet coffee shop, Kit Porter is the matriarchal figure that everyone brings their problems to. Morally Conflicted Leader President Laura Roslin has to often wrestle with her conscious on how to do the right thing for the people whose lives depend on her. Dean Bette Porter has to often wrestle with her conscious on how to do the right thing for her friends and lovers who depend on her. Emotionally Troubled Second In Command His fellow shipmates are shocked when it is revealed that he is a Cylon, but Saul Tigh continues to be a team player. Her friends are shocked when she goes back into a straight relationship, but Tina Kennard rejoins the lesbian team. Straight Arrow Moral Center Lee Adama is the goody-goody hot shot pilot who is always the center of all the drama and action. Alice Piescecki is the goody-goody hot shot journalist whose Chart is the center of all the drama and hook-ups. Duplicitous Villain Evil scientist Gaius Baltar uses his charm and wit to betray everybody. Evil writer Jenny Schecter uses her charm and wit to betray everybody. Rebel Everybody Wants To Sleep With The hard living and tomboyish Starbuck is the best pilot in the fleet and lets everyone know it. The hard living and tomboyish Shane is the most promiscuous lesbian in LA and everyone wants to know her. Hottie With Amazing Powers Caprica Six is the unbelievably beautiful manipulator that can get people do anything through her Cylon skills. Helena Peabody is the unbelievably beautiful manipulator that can get people to do anything through her enormous wealth. Identity-Conflicted Mechanic Galen Tyrol is a genius engineer that can fix anything but is troubled to learn that he is a Cylon trapped in a human body. Max Sweeney is a genius programmer that can hack anything but is troubled to learn that he is a man trapped in a woman’s body. Airtime The SciFi Channel on Fridays at 10 Showtime on Sundays at 9 In one short blog post I can only touch on a few of the characters in the two show, but I hope this post has been helpful as a guide to what series finale you should be watching. BlatantCommentWhoring™: What’s your pick, Cylons or lesbians?