In LA

I had a great time in Minneapolis, and then flew from Minneapolis to Detroit, Detroit to Tokyo, and Tokyo to Beijing. That was the longest period of time I’ve ever spent in the air, and it really wasn’t too bad. I did have to face the dreaded 747 bathroom sink a couple of times, and my computer ran out of battery while I watched a DVD on the longest leg of the flight, forcing me to switch to studying Chinese from a book, but otherwise everything was pleasant, and I needed to study.

The last leg, from Tokyo to Beijing, was on a nice new Airbus A330. This plane featured LCD TVs above and 75W power outlets below every seat. My laptop has an 85W power supply, so in order to power the computer from the plane I had to remove the laptop’s battery (this cuts out the charging circuitry so the computer draws less power from the outlet). In this manner I was able to watch another two episodes of Battlestar Galactica season 2, which is an amazing show.

A digression is due here to discuss Battlestar Galactica, in case you’ve never heard of it. BG is a new rendition of an 70’s sci-fi TV show, and it airs on the SciFi channel. Rather than push mere nostalgia and kitsch, the creators of the new Battlestar Galactica threw out everything from the old show besides some character and ship names and basic plot elements, and created something new, intelligent, and exciting. It is fun to contrast the new BG with the Star Trek universe –as opposed to the utopian vision espoused by Star Trek, BG feels to have been cut from the real world. Its characters come from a poly-theistic society with many imperfections rather than a perfectly fair “Federation”. There are characters with petty personal issues, depression, commanding officers with drinking problems, terrorists, prisoners, narcissistic science officers, and many characters simply behaving badly. The writers put these folk in impossibly tight situations and the ensuing chaos is delicious. The episodes I just finished watching, entitled “Pegasus” and “Resurrection Ship (Part 1 & 2)” were particularly outstanding. I like the show so much I don’t begrudge the writers for veering into to Philip K. Dick territory with some themes and characters, since frankly they do Dick much better than any film that has been based on actual Dick novels.

Congrats are due to the BG team for their 3 emmy nominations. This show has some of the best writing and one of the best ensemble casts on TV, so I’m a little surprised they didn’t receive any writing, casting, directing, or editing nominations, but nominations in 3 technical categories is nothing to sneeze at.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 6:14 am and is filed under China, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.